
Class _ I inicS 

Book <Lj5 

Copyright N?____ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN 



A FEW PLAIN SERMONS TO BUSY ADULTS 
WHO THINK THEY HAVE NOT THE 
TIME TO TAKE A THOROUGH 
COURSE OF CATECHET- 
ICAL INTRUCTIONS 



REV. S. P. LONG, A.M. 

MANSFIELD, OHIO 



MISS FLORENCE M. WELTY, Reporter 



COLUMBUS, OHIO. 

The F. J. Heer Printing Co, 
1908 






LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Oooies Received 

JAN 5 1909 

Copy ft (it tntry _ 

CLASS CU XXc < No ' 
COPY ». 



COPYRIGHT 1908 

BY 
REV. S. P. LONG, A. M. 




I. Prepare to Meet Thy God 



Cloth, 35 Cents, Postpaid 



2. The Way Made Plai 



in 



Cloth, $1.00, Postpaid 

?. The Wounded Word 



Cloth, 35 Cents, Postpaid 

4. The Great Gospel 

Half-leather, $2.50, Expressage Prepaid 

5. The Eternal Epistle 




LUTHERAN ROOK STORE 



Contents 



CONTENTS. 

l 'Au- 
ction 

The Valley of Decision 13 

Jesus is the Way and the Only Way to the Father 31 

The Law Knows no Other Way 53 

Faith Knows no Other Way ' ^ 

Prayer Knows no Other Way y 9 

Baptism Knows no Other Way 125 

Confession and Absolution Know no Other Way 146 

The Lord's Supper Knows no Other Way 170 

Question Box 189 

6 



Introduction 



INTRODUCTION 



FOR the growth and development of the Kingdom of 
God, it is a wise ordination that there are among 
its servants, diversities of gifts. The capacity to set 
before the people sound and wholesome theological 
truths in plain unambiguous speech, is something to be 
coveted by every preacher of Righteousness. The man in 
whom there is united soundness in doctrine and lucid and 
homely force of statement, has within himself the possibility 
of unusual effectiveness as a preacher. Such a man we take 
the author of these sermons to be. They are, what they 
claim to be, plain sermons for plain people. They are, as 
we understand, weekday evening discourses spoken by an 
earnest man in the course of his ministry, to one of the 
largest Protestant congregations in this state. The author 
is a courageous man in the advocacy of his convictions. He 
believes heartily and strongly in the Lutheran apprehension 
of the Gospel. His preaching is an effective statement for 
the popular mind, of what is comprehended in that appre- 
hension. 

This preaching is evangelistic, not in any restricted or 
particularistic professional sense, but as being in harmony 
with the true New Testament use of the Word. The author 
is a most diligent and laborious pastor, and in his oversight 
of the flock committed to his care, he has come to learn not 
only the real religious needs of the people, but has also ac- 
quired a knowledge of the necessity of speaking to the con- 
gregation in language, the meaning of which can easily be 
(9) 



10 INTRODUCTION. 

discerned if the message of the Gospel is to he of profit. 
His great faith in the Word of God as the "Sword of the 
Spirit" leads him to adhere, so far as the content is concerned, 
to that which has been written. 

As a speaker he is acceptable either in the pulpit or 
as a lecturer on the platform, but his constant adherence to 
the form of sound words, and his simplicity of speech, ren- 
der him especially attractive and effective as a preacher. May 
the blessing of the Head of the Church, who has declared 
by the word of His apostle, that by "the foolishness of 
preaching" God would save the world, go with these dis- 
courses on their errand of spiritual quickening and edifica- 
tion of such as have believed on the Lord, and have been 
made participants in His grace. 

David H. Bauslin, 

The Hamma Divinity School, Springfield, Ohio. 
Trinity Season, 1908. 



The Way Made Plain 



The Way Made Plain 



THE VALLEY OF DECISION. 
Joel 3 :14. 

Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision: for the 
day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision. 



Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy truth 
Thy Word is truth. Amen. 



Beloved hearers in Christ the risen Lord : — 

God is Judge. He proclaims in this same les- 
son that He will sit in judgment. "Let the hea- 
then be wakened, and come tq the valley of 
Jehoshaphat ; for there will I sit to judge all the 
heathen roundabout. Put ye in the sickle, for 
the harvest is ripe ; come, get you down ; for the 
press is full, the fats overflow ; for their wicked- 
ness is great. Multitudes, multitudes in the val- 
ley of decision ; for the day of the Lord is near in 
the valley of decision." God is Judge, and on 
the great Judgment Day he will not try to save 
you. There is no chance there for Holy Bap- 
tism; there is no chance there for catechetical 
instruction; there is no chance there for deliber- 
ation about what you must do to be saved. The 
Judgment Day will not convert people, it will 
only let the whole world know who was con- 

(13) 



14 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

verted, who was regenerated. The Judgment Day 
will simply state the facts that have been long 
before. 

While it is true that God is Judge, it is also 
true in a certain sense that man is judge, for 
you are deciding tonight, or some time in this 
life, exactly what God will decide on the Judg- 
ment Day. It is simply a question, What are 
you and I going to do with Jesus Christ the Sav- 
ior? Will we accept Him or reject Him? Will 
we let God save us or remain damned? A great 
many people sneer at the idea of damnation, and 
say that just because God is love, He is not 
going to damn anybody on the Judgment Day. 
God never did damn any one and never will. We 
are condemned — God came to save, and the 
question that you and I must decide is whether 
we are going to .let God save us, or remain lost. 
For the Son of man is come to seek and to save 
that which was lost. We have in view some- 
thing greater in this church than simply to take 
one or two into the church at a time; we have 
something greater in view than simply to have 
the pastor run after a class of fifty or sixty, six 
months or a year ; we have in view for our chil- 
dren a course of instruction that means at least 
seven years. If you will send your little chil- 
dren as I want them sent on Saturday morning 
from the time they are old enough to walk to 
the church alone until they are fourteen years 
old, they will be Christians that will know what 
they believe and come home to God just as sure 
as His Word will not return void. But T realize 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 15 

that many have passed beyond that hour ; I real- 
ize that this city, and all cities, are filled with 
people who have been unfortunate enough not 
to have the right kind of parents, who have been 
unfortunate enough not to have had the right 
kind of training, who have become busy, and so 
busy that they must be saved in a few months 
time or lost forever, and consequently we have 
in mind tonight to reach out between this Easter 
Sunday on which the Lord rose from the dead, 
and the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit 
came down with fire from heaven; we have in 
view to reach the men, to reach the women, to 
reach the adults who are busy and have very 
little time to stop and investigate, but who have 
minds to think, and who can in a very short 
time learn the way, and take more time here- 
after to learn the details about the branches of 
this way. We have in view during the next 
seven Thursday evenings to show the Way and 
make it plain to every intelligent one who will 
come and sit down in this center row of pews; 
we have in mind that every member of this con- 
gregation shall now look around in his home and 
see if there isn't one in that home that should 
sit down and listen to these instructions; we 
have in view now the farmer who must know it 
is more important to sit down these seven Thurs- 
day evenings than it is even to sow the grain, 
to plant the corn, or even to reap the harvest; 
we have in view now not only our own families, 
but we have in view the young man that is away 
from his father's and pi other's influence; we have 



16 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

in view the lady that has left home, surrounded 
by ungodly men; we have in view all who need 
the help that we are bound to give them through 
God's Word, and such an appeal as I want to 
make tonight calls for a decision, and I am sure 
that the decision in some cases must be made to- 
night, or it never will be made. It is a solemn 
hour. May you feel your responsibility, and may 
I feel it, and may we all go forth this night with 
a determination that we are going to make no 
mistake, neither for time nor for eternity. 

THE VALLEY OF DECISION. 

Let us notice: 

I. Its attraction. 

II. Its area. 

I. What is the attraction of this valley of 
decision? Multitudes, multitudes in the valley 
of decision, for the day of the Lord is near in 
the valley of decision. 

1. Multitudes arc an attraction. You al- 
ways find that where the people gather in erowds 
is where the others want to go. There is an at- 
traction in the multitudes, and we find that the 
valley of decision is lull of many, many people. 
People, for instance, who are wavering Chris- 
tians; there are people in this valley who are 
dissatisfied back-sliders; and there are people 
there who have only heard the Gospel. 

I refer first to the wavering Christians. It 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 17 

does seem to me that in the church of God these 
days we find so many people who are like they 
were in the days of Elijah. They are perfectly 
willing to be Christians providing they have no 
business on hands, providing there is no other 
place to go ; they are willing to go to church, if 
there is no place to go on a visit, if there is 
nothing else they can do, then they come to 
God's house ; but if there is any place else to go, 
or anything else to do, you can never see them 
there. Then again, we have people who are per- 
fectly willing to sing praises to God the Father, 
Son and Holy Ghost, on Sunday, and just as 
willing to pray to an unknown god during the 
week. We have so many people trying, as the 
Germans say, to carry water on both shoulders. 
They are for God one day and against Him the 
next. These wavering people ought to come to 
some decision; they ought to decide whether 
they want to serve the Lord God or not. They 
ought to know when there is service in the 
church, whether they want to go to the church 
or somewhere else. They ought to know whether 
to give their whole service to the true and living 
God, or waver and go limping around as the 
prophet said : "How long halt ye between two 
opinions? If the Lord be God, follow Him; but 
if Baal, then follow him." There are many 
people in the valley off decision that are 
wavering between Jesus Christ and an unknown 
god; who are wavering between justification by 
faith, and salvation by self -righteousness, who 

2 



18 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

are wavering between trusting alone in the merits 
of Jesus Christ as the way to heaven, or to go 
with the big crowd who think they can do as 
they please, and finally land in a great eternity 
and get to heaven some way. Come to a decision 
tonight, ye multitudes in the valley of decision. 
Not only do we find a multitude of wavering- 
Christians there, but there is also a multitude of 
dissatisfied back-sliders. That is a word hardly 
ever used in the Lutheran church, and the rea- 
son is because we do not find them as a rule. 
In a truly Lutheran church they do not 
slide back. " In the most of the churches where 
they slide back, it is because they never slide 
forward. In the most of the churches they never 
had any proper instruction. They did not know 
what God does teach concerning the Lord's Sup- 
per, concerning baptism, concerning the Office 
of the Keys, concerning conversion ; they did not 
know exactly what God does teach concerning 
regeneration, and in the midst of some excite- 
ment they get up and say, "I am a Christian," 
or "Pray for me; I have joined church;" they 
slide in so easily, and the first thing you know 
they slide out just as easily as they slid in; be- 
cause they never knew what they were doing. 
And so I say in a truly Lutheran church, where 
they take a course of catechetical instruction, 
where they know what they do, they do not slide 
out. I would not say it so positively, but I look 
over a period of eighteen years of ministry and 
only find one man who had taken the proper 
course of instruction that ever left the church. 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 19 

And so I am glad to say that as a rule we do not 
talk about back-sliders ; and yet there are people 
in the world who had a little of God's truth, then 
came an hour of temptation, and they hadn't 
enough truth to hold to, and they went away 
from the church, away from father's and 
mother's religion, out into the world ; they said, 
We will sow our wild oats ; we will think awhile ; 
we will study over this thing, and conscience 
was never quite dull enough to let them rest. Con- 
science is a bright light when once kindled that 
is hard to smother; and so we have the world 
today full of people that really are like that man 
that fell off of a B. & O. train the other night, 
down between here and Newark. He told me in 
the hospital here that he never was a member of 
the church ; he told me he did not go to Sunday 
School ; that he did not go to hear the Word of 
God; but he said, "When I fell off of the train 
my only cry was 'God, help me.' " And then 
when he struck the bottom 35 feet below, and 
was found, and brought here to the hospital, and 
came to consciousness, he sent for me and said, 
"I want to be a Christian; I don't want to die 
as I have lived." In other words, all the time, 
going up and down over these iron rails, there 
was a conscience in that man that burned, and 
never gave him any rest, and the moment he was 
thrown, he knew not where, he cried out, "God, 
help me!" That man was still in the valley of 
decision. Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of 
decision. 

Then there are a great many people who have 



20 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

never professed to be Christians, but have heard 
the Word of God. They have never rejected it; 
they simply have listened; they have never come 
to any decision whatever, although they have 
heard enough to make them think. Those peo- 
ple are still in the valley of decision. Multi- 
tudes, multitudes in the valley of decision, says 
the great prophet. 

2. Now this is not the only attraction we 
find. There is another attraction, and that is 
God Himself. "For the day of the Lord is near, 
in the vallev of decision." It is the Lord's day 
now in this time of the history of the world. The 
first day of the week is the Lord's day. It is in 
commemoration of the resurrection of Jesus 
Christ; it is in commemoration of the conquer- 
ing of the devil and death and all hell, and if 
there is ever a day that has the right to be called 
the Lord's dav in church history, it is Sunday, 
or the first day of the week; but there is one day 
coming that is preeminently, even above Sunday, 
the Lord's Day, and that is the day when all the 
dead that are" in the sea, and all the dead that 
are in the graves, and all those whose ashes have 
been scattered to the winds, shall all rise and 
stand before God on that great, great day, the 
Lord's Day. "For there will I sit to judge all 
the heather roundabout," says this great Judge; 
and surely, my friends, the Lord Jesus Christ 
ought to be some attraction in the valley of de- 
cision. 

His works ought to attract us. I do not see 
how any man with open eyes can stand on God's 



THE WAT MADE PLAIN. 21 

earth on these spring mornings, on such a beau- 
tiful Easter morning, and not be led to do some 
thinking. How can any man with a mind look 
at a beautiful lily like this and not think 
of God Who made it? How can any man with 
any mind in him, stand up in the morning and 
see the sun rise in all his glory, and not offer a 
prayer to the God who made that sun? How can 
he look at the earth as it covers itself with the 
beautiful green, and not thank the God who gave 
us this beautiful carpet? How can he rise in 
the morning and find that the birds are an hour 
ahead of him, singing songs of praise to their 
Master, and never lift his voice in praise to God? 
How can he look at the works of God without 
knowing there is One in our presence who at- 
tracts us? 

We not only are attracted to this valley of 
decision by the works of God, but especially by 
His Word. The works of God are enough to 
tell us that God is wise; that He is almighty; 
that He is good ; but there are some things that 
the works of God will never proclaim. If you 
had nothing but the works of creation around 
you, you never could tell me who God is. Do 
you know of any nation on earth without the 
Bible and without the missionary, that knew 
who God was? It is true that the stars in the 
heavens are the alphabet of God, but who is able 
to look up at those stars and spell out the Father, 
Sod, and Holy Ghost? If, therefore, you want 
to be attracted to the valley of decision cor- 
rectly, yoD must be drawn by the Word of God ; 



22 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

by the left hand of the Old Testament, and by 
the right hand of the New, and throughout this 
Book there are soul-drawing verses. You will 
find such verses as these in the Old Testament : 
"Look unto Me, all the ends of the earth, and be 
ye saved, for I am God and there is none else." 
Isn't that a power to draw down to the valley 
of decision? You will find in the Psalms that 
beautiful poem that David wrote about the Good 
Shepherd. How can any man say : "The Lord 
is my Shepherd, I shall not want" and try to get 
away from the Shepherd? How can any man 
say, "He leadeth me beside the still waters," 
"He restoreth my soul," and then try to get out 
of the valley of decision? How can any man say, 
"Though I walk through the valley of the shadow 
of death I will fear no evil, for Thou art with 
me ; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me" and 
not be drawn into the valley of decision? Not 
only do you find this power in the Old Testament, 
but you find it equally in the New. How any 
man can sit down and read the writings of the 
four evangelists and not be a Christian, I do not 
understand. How any man can read the Acts 
of the Apostles, where the enemies even said, 
"They are going to turn the world upside-down," 
and not see the power of the Holy Ghost, I do 
not understand. How any man can read the 
Book of Kevelation, which shows not only now 
what took place in the past two thousand years, 
but is telling us what will take place until the 
great Lord's Day of Judgment, and not believe 
the Word of God, I cannot understand. So then 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 23 

this old Bible, the Word of God, is attractive, 
and draws. 

Isn't it remarkable how this Word of God 
does draw? I remember the first few Sundays 
I preached the Gospel in Mansfield. You could 
hear it coming from all sources : "This is a new 
broom." It isn't a very "new broom" today. It 
isn't a very "new broom" this evening. My 
friends, this old Word of God is not a "new 
broom;" it is the old attractive Word of God, 
and when correctly preached will hold the multi- 
tudes in every generation and century. 

Not only is God attractive as far as His Word 
is concerned, but His attributes are attractive. 
We find in this Word that God is holy. You and 
I must stand before Him. Though in our sins 
we try to flee away from His holiness, our con- 
science tells us we must come back and bow the 
knee to Him; and consequently we want to es- 
cape our sins, and are attracted into the valley. 
This Word of God tells us that He is omniscient, 
— all-powerful. If so, then in my walking I 
want my God to be near me, to draw me to the 
valley of decision. I am told in this Word that 
God is with me always, and with you always. 
"Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of 
the world." Then I want to be with God and 
God with me. And so I go through all the at- 
tributes of my Savior, and they draw ; they draw 
me and they must draw you. Multitudes, multi- 
tudes in the valley of decision. There is nothing 
in all the world that draws like God, with His 



24 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

works, with His Word, and with His attributes 
and with His dying love on the cross. 

If I were to stand here and make a plea on 
some point of law, it might be attractive to you 
tonight; if I were to repeat the same plea next 
Sunday night, most of you would stay at home ; 
if I were to repeat it for four successive even- 
ings, not one would come back. If I were to 
make a great political speech that would make 
you clap your hands for joy; if I were to repeal 
the same speech another time, many of you 
would leave; if I were to give that a few more 
times, none would come back. But here is the 
same old Gospel I have preached to you four 
years and more, and I have been telling you 
nothing more and nothing less than Christ and 
Him crucified, and you are sitting here tonight, 
and will be here next Sunday, and you will come 
again. Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of 
decision. 

II. We have noticed the attractions of this 
valley. Let us notice its area. What is its 
length, and its breadth? "For the Lord is near 
in the valley of decision." We find that every 
valley has length, and it has breadth, and in this 
ease we find first the breadth of this valley "of 
decision. It is bound on one side by those who 
never heard the Gospel; on the other by those 
who have heard the Gospel and have either ac- 
cepted it fully or fully rejected it. 

1. I refer to those who never heard the Gos- 
pel. "Let the heathen be wakened, and come up 
to the valley of Jehoshaphat." The valley if 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 25 

Jehoshaphat is the valley of the Judgment of the 
Lord, literally translated. The great prophet 
saw that the heathen would come to this valley. 
In other words, the valley is bound on the one 
side by heathen that never heard the Word of 
God. How can a poor heathen who never heard 
of Christ, who never heard of the Bible nor of 
heaven, who doesn't know anything about sin, 
or destruction, or hell, come to a decision? The 
apostle Paul says in the tenth chapter of Ro- 
mans, "How shall they believe in Him of Whom 
they have not heard?" You can readily see, 
therefore, that a heathen who never heard of 
Christ, and never heard the Gospel, is on the 
outer edge of the valley of decision. 

Crossing over on the other side, you come to 
a class of men who have heard the Gospel, and 
when they have heard it, they must do one of 
two things with it. If they have fully accepted 
it, they are not in the valley of decision. If they 
have fully rejected it they are not in the valley 
of decision. If a man has heard the Gospel, and 
loves it, has given up his sins, accepted Jesus 
Christ as his Savior, takes the vow to be faithful 
until death, lives prayerfully, striving more and 
more to live like Christ on earth, pray tell me, 
why should that man be in the valley of decis- 
ion? He is not in the valley of decision any 
more; he has given the judgment; he is on the 
outside, on the border of this valley. 

On the other hand, there are people who have 
heard the same Word of God; they have heard 
the same message of Jesus Chrst, the atonement, 



26 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

have heard of he resurrection from the dead; 
they have possibly been confirmed, baptized, 
have gone to the Lord's Supper, have been in full 
connection with the Christian Church, have said, 
"My Redeemer is my All in all ;" but they have 
said, "Although I have heard it all, although I 
have had the light, I don't want it ; I have fully 
decided that from henceforth I shall never go 
to church, I shall never hear God's Word, I shall 
never go to the Lord's Supper, I am done with 
Christians;" that man has committed the sin 
against the Holy Ghost; that man has gotten 
out of the valley of decision and is on the outer 
border, never to come back again. 

2. That is the breadth of the valley of de- 
cision. What is its length? The length of this 
valley begins somewhere on this side of your 
birth, and ends somewhere on this side of your 
death. 

I say it begins on this side of your birth 
somewhere. That little child that was brought 
here tonight to be baptized in the name of the 
Father, Son and Holy Ghost, did not come by 
its decision, it came by the decision of its father 
and mother. So you will notice that this valley 
of decision comes somewhere on this side of your 
birth. Somewhere after you were born you 
began to do your own thinking, and there was the 
beginning of the boundary of the valley of decis- 
ion for you. How far does that valley run up 
and down life? It may go a great distance, and 
it may not. When we look over the history of 
the Christian Church we discover that nearly all 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 27 

Christians began somewhere between infancy 
and the fifteenth or twentieth year. If you have 
passed beyond the twentieth year of your life and 
are not a child of God tonight, let me assure you 
you are very close to the lower end of the val- 
ley of decision. It is rarely true that men come 
into this valley of decision after their thirtieth 
or fortieth year, and yet, thanks be to God, I 
have confirmed one class in my life of fourteen 
members, the youngest of which was sixty-eight 
*ears old. There are classes into which people 
come when they are old; but I come to you to- 
night with a warning. Be careful that you do 
not try to lengthen out this valley too long. The 
average life is only thirty-seven years. Some of 
you have gone down beyond that average line 
tonight and are not yet children of God. Re- 
member what I say to you. Somewhere, very 
close to where you are sitting tonight, is the end 
of the valley of decision. These decisions should 
be made, and made in time, and I come to you 
this evening with the request that you make 
your decision right now. I do not know how 
many people may be sitting under the sound of 
my voice this evening who are not communicant 
members of any church, but I suppose there are 
a great many here, and it may not be your fault 
that you have not been a member before, but it 
will be your fault if you do not decide right now 
that you are going to listen for seven Thursday 
evenings to "The Way made Plain." You cannot 
afford for anything that the world can offer you, 
to absent yourselves from the privilege of learn- 



28 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

ing more clearly the things that pertain to 
eternity. I am going to do tonight what I am 
not in the habit of doing; but, my friends, de- 
cisions cannot be made tomorrow ; decisions can 
only be made in the present, and my question 
that I desire to ask of you tonight is this : Are 
you willing, you who are above fifteen years of 
age, and not a communicant member of any 
church, are you willing to sit down for seven 
Thursday evenings from 7:30 to 8:30, and just 
listen, and pray God to give you wisdom and 
good judgment, and not to be misled by any man, 
and just take that which is best for you for time 
and forever? And when the seventh evening is 
past, you must come to your own decision as to 
what you want to do, and God will bless you. 
Now I want to ask a question : How many men 
are there in this house tonight, married men; 
how many women are there in this house to- 
night, married women ; how many young men 
are there away from home and yet who want to 
do right ; how many young women are there who 
have not got the time to take the more thorough 
course of the younger class; how many such 
people have I in this house tonight, who are will- 
ing to sit down and listen for seven nights to 
The Way made Plain? I am going to give you 
about a moment's time to rise while we all sing 
one verse of "Nearer, my God, to Thee.*' I 
would like to see one hundred people rise 
tonight, if they are here. I thank my God, 
if there are none to rise — if you are all mem- 
bers of the Christian Church; it is only that 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 29 

much more of a blessing, but if you are not, do 
not be ashamed; just say, "I am willing" and 
that will give me a chance to know who and 
where you are. Let us sing : 

Nearer, my God, to Thee, 

Nearer to Thee! 
E'en though it be a cross 

That raiseth me; 
Still all my song shall be, 
Nearer, my God, to Thee, 

Nearer to Thee! 



Prayer. 



O God, we ask Thy special blessing upon 
these nine who have stood up and come to the 
decision that they want to be Thine. We pray 
Thee, O God, to be with them these coming seven 
Thursday evenings, and give Thy servant the 
strength to remain with them, and give them the 
strength to come. Do Thou move every member 
of this class to come and to bring some one else 
to hear this instruction, that we may have a 
wonderful Pentecost oil- the coming day in June 
when we commemorate the coming of the Holy 
Ghost. And now we ask Thee, heavenly Father, 
richly to bless every one in this house tonight, 
and if any have not come to the right decision, 
do Thou help them to decide right now Avhat to 
do for Thee. Hear this our prayer. We ask it 
in the name of the blessed Master who taught us 
to pray: 



30 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

Our Father, who art in heaven : Hallowed be 
Thy name : Thy kingdom come : Thy will be done 
on earth as it is in heaven : Give us this day our 
daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we 
forgive those who trespass againt us: Lead us, 
not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: 
For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and 
the glory, forever and ever, Amen. 



JESUS IS THE WAY AND THE ONLY WAY 
TO THE FATHER. 

THE BIBLE KNOWS NO OTHER WAY. 

My remarks for this and the next six Thurs- 
day evenings shall be based upon John 14 :4-6. 

"And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know. 
Thomas saith unto Him, Lord, we know not whither Thou 
goest; and how can we know the way? Jesus saith unto 
him, I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life: no man 
cometh unto the Father but by Me. 



Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy Truth: 
Thy Word is Truth. Amen. 



Beloved in Christ : — 

First of all, let me give a word of advice to 
parents. Do not let your children who are below 
the age of fifteen come into a class that I address 
this evening with the purpose of uniting with 
the church and taking no further instructions. 
It would be a serious mistake to let young peo- 
ple who can have better advantages, be fully in- 
structed for membership in the church in seven 
evenings. Nevertheless, it will be good for them 
to be here, and I do hope that I shall so speak 
to the busy men and busy women who have 
not had the opportunities in the past that some 

(31) 



32 THi: WAY MADE PLAIN. 

have had, who want to know the way, and want 
to know it quickly. I hope, I say, that I may 
feel my responsibility, and may talk to you as I 
would talk if I had only seven hours more to talk 
to you, and that by the time the seventh hour is 
up you would stand before your God. It is not my 
purpose therefore to speak to you in long, pe- 
riodic sentences, or to select beautiful language, 
or to speak as an orator from the platform, but 
rather to talk to you as in the family, face to 
face, and show you first that there is only one 
great universe. 

Jesus said to His disciples, ''Let not your heart 
be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in 
Me. In My Father's house are many mansions." 
Jesus has many mansions in His Father's house, 
but only one house ; and let us not forget that the 
same God Who rules this earth is the same One 
who rules the sun, and the moon, and the stars, 
and the same God Who rules in heaven ; that the 
whole universe is but one house of God. 

And, furthermore, let us not forget that there 
is but one God. "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our 
God is one Lord." The first commandment al- 
ready shows us that there is but one God. "I 
am the Lord, thy God ; thou shalt have no other 
gods before Me." 

And just as there is only one universe, and 
only one God, just so there is only one Savior. 
I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man 
cometh unto the Father but by Me, said Jesus 
Christ. The apostle tells us that there is no 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 33 

other name under heaven whereby man can be 
saved. 

Now, if you know that there is but one uni- 
verse, one God, and only one Savior, you ought 
to know furthermore, that there is only one 
greatest duty. Jesus said, "Seek ye first the 
kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all 
these things shall be added unto you." Many 
men and many women are remaining out of the 
kingdom of heaven because they think they have 
no time to search the Scriptures and prepare for 
salvation, as if a dollar were worth more than a 
soul; as if time were more important than eter- 
nity. There is no business on earth so important 
now as to sit down and listen to the plain plan 
of salvation. But, in the next place, there is only 
one way to be saved, and that one way is the 
Lord Jesus Christ. 

I promised to make the way plain, and how 
can I make it plainer than simply to state in 
one sentence, Jesus is the ivay, and the only ioay 
to the Father. I am sure there is not one of you 
•who does not wish to reach the Father. There 
is not one of you who would want to die ever- 
lastingly lost. There are not ten ways, nor five 
ways, nor two ways to reach heaven, but only 
one. All that I shall say this evening, and the 
following six Thusrday evenings, shall be com- 
prehended in this one sentence: Jesus is the 
Way and the only way to the Father. May the 
Holy Spirit impress it upon your minds and in 
your hearts and lives forever. 



34 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

THE BIBLE KNOWS NO OTHER WAY. 

I. This Book which I hold in my hand makes 
claims that no other book in the world does, that 
it is a revelation of God to man. This Bible is 
(rod's Word. Is that plain to you? Let me see 
if I cannot make it plain. In this enlightened 
age it ought to be no question whether the Bible 
is God's Word or not, and yet we have so many 
infidels around us, so many skeptics, so many 
things said against the old Book, that it becomes 
necessary now and then to ask ourselves the 
question, Is it plain that this is God's Word? 
Now, let me make it plain to you. 

1. It is plain to me that God can speak. 
Some people seem to worship a kind of an in- 
fluence they call God; they can see God in the 
flower ; they can see God in nature ; they can see 
God in all things around us, but they cannot see 
a personal God, and do not believe in a personal 
God. They do not think that God has ever 
spoken to man, or even could speak to man. 
Now, dear fiends, it is just as plain to me as any- 
thing can be, that God could speak. When I 
see in some factory a threshing machine, it 
looks to me without any doubt whatever, that 
there is the possibility of man to make a thresh- 
ing machine. When I go into a factory and see 
an engine, it is plain to me that the man that 
made the engine is greater than the engine, and 
when I look around me this evening and see 
these hundreds of people sitting here, every one 
with a tongue in his mouth, able to talk, it is 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 35 

plain to me as anything can be that He who gave 
you that tongue, and He who gave you the abil- 
ity to use that tongue, He that could make you 
to talk, could talk Himself ; for is it possible that 
the thing made is greater than the maker? 

2. Not only is it plain to me that God could 
speak, but it is just as plain to me that He would 
speak. All over the world there is a common 
consent that God must be a Father. Could you 
imagine for a single moment that you could be 
a father in a home, and could speak, and could 
have children, and never would speak? The very 
fact that God can speak and has children, is 
plain to me that He would speak. 

3. And not only is it plain to me that He 
would speak, but it is plain to me that He has 
spoken. There are other books of religion, but 
nowhere in all the world do you find a book that 
claims like this Book, "Thus saith the Lord." 
The Mohammedans have their Koran, and other 
false religions have their books of worship, but 
nowhere in all those books do you find a period 
of fifteen hundred years from the time the book 
was begun until it was finished; never do you 
find that the same book was penned by over forty 
or fifty men; never in any of those books do you 
find that there are sixty-six books, and all con- 
taining the same mind. Now, when you read 
through this Book from Genesis to Revelation 
and find it takes a period of about fifteen hun- 
dred years from the time the first verses were 
written until the last were written, you find that 
there is the same Mind running through this 



36 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

whole Book, and that this Mind can be no other 
than the Mind of God ; but where is the one man 
that ever wrote for fifteen hundred years ; and 
where are there sixty books in the world that 
can be found under one cover, that have the 
same mind? So it is plain to me, and I believe 
it must be plain to you, that this Book can be no 
other than that which it claims, the Book of 
God. "Holy men of old spake as they were moved 
by the Holy Ghost." "All Scripture is given by 
inspiration of God, and is profitable for doc- 
trine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction 
in righteousness, that the man of God may be 
perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good 
works." If this matter is not plain to you, that 
the Bible is God's Word, there is no use to 
teach you the doctrines of the Bible. If the 
Bible is only an old book that does not consist 
of the revelation of Jesus Christ, and the revel- 
ation of the true and living God, we might just 
as well stop here as to go another step further. 
Is it plain to you that the Bible is God's Word? 
If so, I want to state another proposition con- 
cerning this Bible. 

II. Without Jesus the Bible would be total 
darkness. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth 
and the life, and no man cometb to the Father 
but by Me. 

Now, I say tonight that the Word of God 
itself would be total darkness without Jesus 
Christ. Take Jesus out of this Book, and what 
dou you find? The darkness of Satan; the dark- 
ness of sin, and the darkness of destruction. 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 37 

Head this book through without Christ in it, 
and you will find one long trail of the old ser- 
pent going over every page; read this Book 
without Christ in it, and you will find sin soil- 
ing every page; read this Book through without 
Jesus in it, and you will find floods, and graves, 
and battles, and death, and hell, and destruc- 
tion, and darkness — the darkness of Egypt, and 
the darkness of those three hours when Jesus 
was hanging on Calvary is not any more dense 
than the darkness of the Bible would be without 
Jesus Christ in it. So I tell you tonight that 
you never could find your way through this 
Book, were it not for the fact that Jesus Christ 
is the only way, and the way to the Father. 

III. But when you find Jesus in this Book, 
then it is the brightest of all books; then you 
find in the very first book of this Bible the 
promise of the seed of the woman that should 
crush the serpent's head; you find that promise 
repeated time and again, becoming brighter and 
brighter as you read through the Old Testament, 
not only telling us that He shall be born of a 
virgin, but telling us what His name shall be; 
telling us where He shall be born ; telling us that 
He shall die for our sins, and that He shall rise 
again without suffering corruption. 

As we go on through this Book we come to 
the bright light of the New Testament, where 
the angels from heaven come and sing, "Glory 
to Hod in the highest, and on earth peace, good 
will toward men;" where the very heavens are 



38 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

lit up with a Star of the East, telling us the 
Savior is born. 

We come to the day of Pentecost, when the 
fiery tongues from heaven tell the wonderful 
story that Christ has risen, and that Christ has 
ascended on high, and that the power of the 
Holy Spirit is making Him known to the ends 
of the earth. Read on through this Book and 
you will find not only the history of the past, 
and the history of the present, but the history of 
the future, the Judgment to come, and the great 
eternity beyond. And so I say when you read 
this Bible carefully, you will find that without 
Jesus it is the darkest of all books, and with 
Him it is the brightest. 

IV. I want to give you another proposition 
to show you just how to read this Bible. 

1. Get your last Bible and some good helps, 
this very evening. A young woman came to me 
to buy a Bible, and asked my advice as to what 
kind of a Bible she should buy. I said, Get a 
Bible with good print; get a Bible large enough 
that you can read it when you are old. Let me 
give that advice to all who are sitting before me 
tonight. If Jesus Christ is the only way to 
the Father, then be sure that you get a Bible 
that you can be familiar with when you are old. 
What a mistake it is to buy a little Bible with 
fine print, read it a few years, and then your 
eyes give way, and you have got to get a new 
Bible, and you are not familiar with it, and 
consequently cannot read it as you could the 
old Bible. At once buy one of the best Bibles 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 39 

that you can find, well bound, good large print, 
and make that the last Bible you ever want to 
own. 

2. My second advise with regard to reading 
the Bible is this: Ask the Holy Spirit to give 
you light. If I this evening wrote you a letter 
and you could not understand it, the best thing 
you could do would be to bring that letter right 
to me and ask me, What did you mean by this 
sentence? or, What do you mean by this page? 
and, if I do not understand my own letter, who 
does? W T e have just read that this Book is the 
Word of the Holy Spirit. "Holy men of God 
spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost" 
Some people say this Bible is a book they can- 
not understand. Why do you not go to the 
Author of the Bible? Why do you not ask Him 
to give you light? Why do you not ask Him to 
help you to understand this Book? So if you 
want to have the way made plain, ask the Au- 
thor to explain Himself. 

3. And then, if you want to understand the 
Bible, distinguish very closely between what 
God's Word teaches, and what it contains. Some 
men cannot understand how the Bible can be 
the Word of God when it tells us what this and 
(hat man said, and tells us what the devil said, 
and what Balaam's ass said. They cannot un- 
derstand how all that can be the Word of God. 
They cannot understand how a description of 
Noah being drunk, and of David committing 
adultery, can be the Word of God, just the same 
as the description of the day of Pentecost. When 



40 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

you read the Word of God, always ask yourself 
the question, What does this Book contain, and 
what does it teach? It not only teaches us what 
good men did; it teaches us what bad men did. 
It not only teaches us what God loves, but it 
teaches us what the devil loves. It not only is 
God's Word to tell us what He Himself says, 
but it is God's Word to tell us what the devil 
said. Now, what the devil said himself is the 
devil's word; it is God's Word to tell us what 
the devil said. So that this Bible is God's Word 
from the first page until the last. Isn't that 
plain? 

4. We will go a step further. I would have 
you make a special study of each book, char- 
acter, warning, promise, and word. If you want 
to understand this Bible fully, make a careful 
study of the book of Genesis; make a study of 
the book of Exodus; study each book carefully 
as you go through the Bible. Remember that 
Genesis means the beginning of things; remem- 
ber that Exodus means the going out from 
Egypt; remember that Leviticus tells us about 
the sacrifice; that Numbers tells us of the num- 
bering of the children of Israel; remember that 
Deuteronomy means the law given again. And 
so, when you read from Joshua remember that 
you are now reading the historical books; when 
you read Job that you are reading the poetical 
books ; remember when you read Isaiah that you 
are reading what the great prophets tell us; 
when you read Hosea, what the minor prophets 
tell us. When vou read the Old Testament re- 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 41 

member that it is telling us that a Savior is 
coming; when you read Matthew, Mark, Luke 
and John, remember that you are reading the 
testimony of four witnesses of the Christ that 
has come; when you read the epistles of Paul, 
remember you are reading the messages that 
the apostle is sending out to the world concern- 
ing the Christ that has come. When you read 
Revelation remember you are reading what God 
tells us will take place from that day until the 
Judgment Day. And thus study every Book of 
the Bible ; study the character of the men in the 
Bible; study the warnings that are given; take 
up God's promises one by one and hold to them 
and drink from them as a thirsty man would 
drink from a cool fountain. 

5. Again, I would have you study this Word 
of God, looking for yourself and God on every 
page. The Bible is a wonderful Book. When 
you come to my home and I hand you the photo- 
graph album, you are glad to look over one page 
after the other to see the likeness of men. If 
you will read the Bible as God would have you 
read it, you will always find the picture of God 
and the picture of yourself on every page. Read 
it as if you were looking at your own photo- 
graph. 

6. Again, I would have you read this Book 
with marks on the pages, but not marks to re- 
member where you read last. Some people 
never can read the Bible without having a kind 
of a ribbon drawn through it to tell them where 
they stopped. It reminds me of a poor farmer 



42 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

boy hoeing corn ; when he goes to dinner he lays 
a stick down at the last row that he may know 
where he quit. A man who hoes corn like that 
hasn't a great interest in his corn. A man that 
takes an interest in the matter knows exactly 
where lie stopped and where to begin after din- 
ner. A man who reads his Bible carefully, 
studying it carefully, does not need to throw a 
little ribbon in there to know where he quit. On 
the other hand, let us not be afraid of some 
marks in the Bible. When you hear a sermon 
on a certain text, and that text makes an im- 
pression on you, take a pencil and put a mark 
around that text; put down the name of the 
minister that preached there, and as long as you 
live you will remember that sermon. When 
your mother dies, take your pencil and draw a 
mark around her funeral text, as I have one 
around my mother's funeral text in this Bible, 
and you will never forget what your pastor 
told you that day. When you read a chapter 
and find a wonderful promise that takes hold 
of your soul, put a mark around it. And thus 
from Genesis to Revelation have your Bible so 
marked that you can read a thousand things 
there that no "other man on earth can read. 

7. Then I would have you read your Bible 
as the latest and best news. How you run to 
the door to get the daily paper. You want to 
read all about the last battle; you want to read 
all about the last bank that failed, and this, and 
that, but the old Bible lies at home week after 
week, month after month, year after year, and 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 43 

you never look into it; and yet there is more 
real history in this Book than there is in all the 
magazines and in all the newspapers in the 
world. Why, this Book not only gives the his- 
tory of the past, and the history of today, but 
it gives the history of the future. Eighteen 
years ago, preaching from the Book of Revela- 
tion, I told my people what would take place, 
and things have taken place in the past year that 
the world knew nothing about, that I told them, 
not by any wisdom that I have, but because it 
is in tbe Book of Revelation. Read the Bible 
therefore, as the newsiest Book in the world. 

8. Again, if you want the way made plain, 
I would have you to remember when you read 
this Book, that there are some things contained 
therein that you cannot comprehend. Some men 
say, There is one thing I don't like about the 
Bible, there are things that I cannot understand. 
Is that wonderful? Would it not be wonderful 
if there were things in this Bible that you un- 
derstood completely ; or let me rather say, Would 
it not be wonderful if you could comprehend 
everything that is in that Book? But if you 
could, I would give it up as the Bible. If you 
could comprehend everything in this Bible, I 
would say that you, or some man of your equal, 
gave it to the world; but remember, just as sure 
as this Bible is the Word of God, just so sure 
it is the product of a Mind that is so great that 
it made the sun, moon, and stars with one word. 
Now how could you expect the worm of the 
garden, that you cut through with a spade, to 



44 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

go to your library and analyze philosophy? How 
could "you expect the little bird that sings on 
yonder little tree in the morning, to be able to 
explain geometry and trigonometry and me- 
chanics? Pray tell me, how can you, with your 
little mind, comprehend the great mind of the 
Lord your God? If, therefore, you find some- 
thing in this Book that is beyond your compre- 
hension, remember that this is one of the strong- 
evidences that it is not the Book of man, but 
the Book of the Lord your God. 

A woman who was worrying a good deal 
about the doctrine of the Trinity because she 
could not understand it, was almost losing her 
mind when her mother tried a cure for her. 
Walking across the field, she said to her daugh- 
ter, "pick up this stone," and the daughter 
picked it up by hard lifting; they walked on a 
little piece farther. "Now," said the mother, 
"pick up this rock," and the daughter said "No 
use trying." "Why not?" "It is too heavy." 
"What are you going to do with it?" "Let it 
lie." "Well, said the mother, "when you come 
to anything in the Bible that you can lift, lift 
it up ; and if you come to something you cannot 
lift, let it lie." When you come to something 
in God's Word plain enough to understand, un- 
derstand it ; and whenever it is too deep for you 
to understand, let it lie there as an evidence of 
God's greatness. Isn't that plain? "I am the 
way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh to 
the Father but by Me." 

9. One more thought concerning the read- 



THE WAT MADE PLAIN. 45 

ing of this Book, and that is, Talk of the Bible 
and walk according to it. How many Christians 
there are that spend their lives around among 
lost men and lost women and talk about every- 
thing else except the Word of God. Let me ask 
you the question as you sit before me this even- 
ing, Do you talk about the Bible, and when you 
meet your fellow Christians do you ask them 
concerning new thoughts that they have found 
in the old Word of God? What a help it would 
be if every one of us, when studying the Scrip- 
tures, finding a new truth, would tell that truth 
to our nearest and dearest friends! What a 
great revelation it would be to all the world if 
all Christians would talk about the Bible and 
walk according to it! 

Oh, men and women, let me urge upon you 
all tonight so to live and so to walk that you 
will compel your children to honor and respect 
you while you live, to honor and respect you 
when you die ; and not only that, but so to miss 
you when you have gone away that they will 
be homesick to spend eternity with you. If 
there is any one thing that I do believe is the 
greatest legacy you can leave to your children, 
it is this: a Christian life that will compel i/onr 
children to honor your Bible, to honor your 
Church, to honor yonr Cod. May God help us 
tonight so to live that when we close our eyes in 
death, that our dear ones left behind may have 
a homesickness that will make them long and 
pray that they may spend eternity where father 
and mother are. 



46 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

In conclusion, I have promised to answer any 
questions that may be put into this box from 
seven to seven-thirty every Thursday evening. 

Question No. 1. How can the various re- 
ligious denominations, not being of the same 
mind here, and laying stress on doctrinal 
thought, enter heaven? D. S. 

Answer: I would say in the first place, that 
the trouble in the present day is not that the 
churches are laying stress on doctrinal thought, 
but rather that they are laying no stress on 
doctrinal thought. The most of the churches 
today do not know what doctrine is. But re- 
member what God's Word says: "Search the 
Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal 
life, and they are they which testify of Me." 
That is doctrine. "All Scripture is given by in- 
spiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, 
for reproof, for correction, for instruction in 
righteousness, that the man of God may be per- 
fect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works." 
So I would say again, that the trouble in the 
present day is not that the churches are too doc- 
trinal, but that they are not doctrinal, and con- 
sequently they are not one. If we were more 
doctrinal we would have only one doctrine, and 
that would be the literal Word of God. But 
now the question arises : How can the various re- 
ligious denominations, not being of the same 
mind here, and laying stress on doctrinal 
thought, enter heaven? I would answer that in 
this way : How can your family, not having the 
same mind, enter the same house? There are 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 47 

no two people in your family that think exactly 
alike about everything, and yet you live in the 
same house, and eat at the same table. Kemem- 
ber what Jesus said in my text : I am the way, 
the truth, and the life, and no man cometh to 
the Father but by Me. If we go on that Way, 
Jesus Christ, no matter if on some minor things 
we do not think alike, we are on the Way, and 
on that Way we enter heaven. 

Question No. 2. How do you know that the 
old Bible is the inspired Word of God? 

Answer: I know that in several ways. I 
know it, in the first place, because God never 
undertook to do a thing that He failed. When 
He tried to make a sun, He made it; when He 
tried to make a moon, He made it; when He 
tried to make the earth, He Made it; when He 
undertook to give us the Bible, and just because 
He undertook it, He gave it. That is my first 
answer. 

The second has already been given. The 
same mind that is found in the first verse of 
Genesis is found in the first chapter of John and 
in the last verse of Revelation; the same mind 
that runs throughout this Book determines that 
it is the mind of God. 

Another proof is this : You cannot find a 
single book in the Bible that is anything like 
any other book outside of the Bible. For in- 
stance, he that is speaking to you has published 
three books. Take the name off of the title page, 
throw those three books out into the world, and 



48 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

any man that would read them would know they 
are the product of the same mind. Eead the 
Bible through, and no difference which Book 
you read, you find it is the product of the same 
mind, namely, the Holy Spirit. 

Question No. 3. Is it right to compel chil- 
dren to go to church and learn the catechism? 
S. C. 

Answer: Let me ask you a few questions. Is 
it right to compel your children to go to the 
public school? Is it right to compel your chil- 
dren to learn to read and write? Not one in 
this house tonight would for a moment question 
the authority and the right of the parent com- 
pelling his children to go to school, compelling 
them to learn in the schools, simply for a short 
life of possibly sixty or seventy years. Can it 
be any question now as to what our duty is to 
our children with regard to God's Word, Avhen 
God has told us to train up a child in the way 
he should go, and when he is old he will not 
depart from it? If parents will live as they 
ought to live, and teach as they ought to teach, 
it ought to take very little .compulsion to rear 
their children in the church of God ; but I would 
not for one moment think of allowing my chil- 
dren to decide whether they are to learn the cate- 
chism or not, or whether they are to go to church 
or not, any more than I would allow them to de- 
cide whether they are going to steal or not, 
whether they are going to lie or not, whether 
they are going to murder or not. In questions 
of right and wrong, neither old nor young have 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 49 

a choice. God decides that. And so I would 
say yes, compel them to study God's Word and 
to go to church. 

Question No. If. What if we would discover 
on the Judgment Day that the Bible is not true? 

Answer: There will be no such discovery 
made. God has settled that. Heaven and earth 
shall pass away, but My Word shall not pass 
away. It is said in my text, I am the Way, the 
Truth, and the Life. The Truth cannot be a 
lie on the Judgment Day. But suppose for a 
single moment that on the Judgment Day you 
were to discover that the Bible is not true, then 
what? If you do not prepare to meet your God, 
and on the Judgment Day the Bible is true, you 
are lost; if on the Judgment Day the Bible is 
found to be not true, I am as well off as you. 
Isn't that plain? 

Question No. 5. Cannot an infidel be a good 
man? 

Answer: Let us distinguish very closely be- 
tween certain terms often misquoted. An atheist 
is a man who denies the existence of God ; an in- 
fidel acknowledges the existence of God but 
denies that the Bible is His Word, or that Jesus 
Christ is the only Savior. The question there- 
fore is simply this: Can a man deny that the 
Bible is God's W T ord and that Jesus is the 

Savior, and be a good man? John E of 

, who himself was a great infidel and af- 



terwards was converted, used to walk around, 
and every opportunity he had, he laid his hand 



50 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

upon his heart and said, "Here is the only argu- 
ment against the Bible — a bad heart." Hume 
was a noted infidel, but he advised people to 
commit suicide, and to commit adultery. Vol- 
taire and Paine were noted infidels, both of them 
were low down rakes. Voltaire even went so far 
as to hire D'Alembert to lie in court. I never 
in all my life met a man in a Christian land 
boasting of infidelity that was a good man. If 
I were to abuse my father and mother, surely 
you would say I am a bad man. An infidel 
abuses his Father in heaven. Can he be good? 
Have you ever noticed that just as soon as a man 
is a bad man he doesn't want anything to do 
with the Bible, and just as soon as he is a good 
man he loves the old Book? I used to sit up in 
the hay-mow and read certain books, but I never 
read the Bible up there. Whenever mother found 
me in the hay-mow reading a book she made up 
her mind it was a bad one. The policemen of 
this country have never yet discovered a real 
bad rogue with a Bible in his satchel; they have 
found bottles there. The very fact therefore 
that a bad man hates the Bible, and a good man 
loves it, is an answer to the question. 



Prayer. 



O God, our heavenly Father, we ask Thy 
Divine blessing upon the message of the hour. 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 51 

We pray Thee that Thou wilt fill Thy servant 
and all these hearers with that spirit of truth 
which shall lead us to Jesus Christ, that shall 
lead us to the only Way that leads to heaven. 
Thy Word itself has proclaimed that Jesus is 
the Way and the only Way to the Father. We 
have found in this Book that the only Way 
through that Bible is the way of Jesus, the light 
of the world. We ask Thee now that this Book 
may become the dearer to us as time passes on. 
It is the only Book in the world that claims to 
determine just what eternity means in its full- 
ness. It claims to be the revelation of the 
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. O Lord our God, 
it is the Book that has decided the destiny of 
nations; it is the Book that is found in more 
homes in more lands than any other book in the 
world; it is the greatest Book that ever left the 
printing press; it is the only Book that has de- 
scribed nations before they were born ; it is the 
only Book that tells us what the Judgment will 
be, which may yet be far away. O God, our 
heavenly Father, we ask Thy special blessing 
upon all who have come to this house tonight. 
Do Thou give us all the spirit of honest investi- 
gation. Help us to seek the Way, and to find 
it here in time and forever. We ask this in the 
name of Jesus, who taught us to pray : 

Our Father, who art in heaven: Hallowed be 
Thy name; Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done 
on earth, as it is in heaven; Give us this day 
our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses 



52 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

as we forgive those who trespass against us; 
Lead us, not into temptation, but deliver us from 
evil; For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, 
and the glorv, forever and ever. Amen. 



THE LAW KNOWS NO OTHER WAY. 
John 14:4-6. 

And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know. 
Thomas saith unto Him, Lord, we know not whither Thou 
goest; and how can we know the way? Jesus saith unto 
him, I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life: no man 

cometh unto the Father but by Me. 



Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy Truth: 
Thy Word is Truth. Amen. 



Beloved in the Lord: 

If the Bible is not the W T ord of God, there is 
no use showing you what the Bible teaches con- 
cerning the way to heaven. But we settled that 
in our own minds last Thursday evening, that 
the Bible is the Word of God, and that this 
Word knows no other way to heaven except 
through the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I 
am sure there is no one sitting before me this 
evening who does not want to die a Christian 
and spend eternity with his God and Master. If 
there is more than one way to heaven, it seems 
to me that the world by this time should have 
found that way out; but the Bible knows no 
other way, and I wish to show you this evening 
that the law of God knows no other way. 

There is one part of the Bible that God wrote 
with His own finger; and not only wrote it on 

(53) 



54 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

tables of stone, but long before that, wrote it 
on the hearts of men. Paul refers to that writ- 
ing in Komans 2:14, 15: "For when the Gen- 
tiles, which have not the law, do by nature the 
things contained in the law, these, having not 
the law, are a law unto themselves ; which show 
the work of the law written in their hearts, their 
conscience also bearing witness, and their 
thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excus- 
ing one another." This law, written in the 
hearts of men, as well as written in the Word 
of God, has never been able to show any man 
another way to heaven. It knows no other way, 
except the Lord Jesns Christ. I then again 
dwell upon my theme: Jesus is the Way, aud 
the only way to the Father. 

THE LAW KNOWS NO OTHER WAY. 

I. Without Jesus the law will condemn 
you. 
II. The lair drive* us to Jesus as Hie only 

way to the Father. 
I. Without Jesus the lair will condemn you. 
I wish to show to you this evening, the law 
briefly stated; that the lair is good; and that the 
law lias no mercy. 

1. We want to understand first exactly 
what the law is. Let me give you the shorter 
form of the law as given by Moses. 

I am the Lord Thy God; Thou shaft have no 
other gods before Me. 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 55 

Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord 
thy God in vain. 

Kemember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy. 

Thou shalt honor thy father and thy mother, 
that it may be well with thee, and thou mayest 
live long upon the earth. 

Thou shalt not kill. 

Thou shalt not commit adultery. 

Thou shalt not steal. 

Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy 
neighbor. 

Thou shalt not covet they neighbor's house. 

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor 
his man servant, nor his maid servant, nor his 
cattle, nor anything that is thy neighbors. 

And concerning this whole law God says: 
I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God, visiting 
the iniquity of the fathers upon the children 
unto the third and fourth generation of them 
that hate Me, and showing mercy unto thou- 
sands of them that love Me and keep My com- 
mandments. 

I take it for granted that you know this law ; 
if not, take your catechisms at once and learn it, 
or go to the Bible itself. 

Now this law briefly stated by Moses, has 
been stated much more briefly by the Lord Jesus 
Christ in Mark 12 :29-31 : 

And Jesus answered him, The first of all the 
commandments is, Hear, O Israel ; The Lord our 
God is one Lord; and thou shalt love the Lord 
thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy 
soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy 



56 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

strength; this is the first commandment; and 
the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love 
thy neighbor as thyself. There is none other 
commandment greater than these. 

You notice at once that Jesus Christ takes 
the first table of the law with its three command- 
ments, and sums them up into one; and the last 
seven on the second table, into the second and 
says, "On these two commandments hang all the 
law and the prophets." 

2. Now, having briefly stated this law, let 
me call your attention to the fact that the law 
is good. 

Again I will show you in Romans 7 :12, these 
words: "Wherefore the law is holy, and the 
commandment holy, and just, and good." The 
law of God is as perfect as anything that God 
ever gave to the world. It is holy; it is good. 
Examine any commandment, and your own 
judgment and conscience will at once acknowl- 
edge that the commandment cannot be any 
better. Isn't it a good law that the Lord should 
tell us that He is the only God, and that we 
shall have no other gods beside Him? Isn't it a 
good law that the man created by God should 
not take His name in vain, should not curse, 
swear, conjure, lie or deceive by that holy name? 
Isn't it a good law that the Lord wants every 
man to rest one day out of seven from his daily 
labor, and come to the house of God and hear 
His Word, and love it, and live according to it? 
Isn't it right that God says, Remember the Sab- 
bath Day to keep it holy? Must we not all ac- 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 57 

knowledge, as parents and as children, that it 
is right that children should honor their parents, 
their fathers and their mothers? What kind of 
a world would this be if children could do just 
as they pleased and had no respect and love for 
father and for mother? Every father knows in 
his heart that God was right when He said that 
children should honor their parents; and every 
child knows that it is right. There can be no 
question about this. "Hearken unto thy father 
that begat thee, and despise not thy mother 
when she is old." It is the common consent of 
humanity that the young man who has no re- 
spect for his parents is not fit to live in any com- 
munity. It is the honest conviction of every 
sensible man and woman that we should respect 
and honor old age. We all know that it is 
wrong to murder. We cannot hurry any person 
out of life, either by suicide, or patricide, or 
matricide, or fratricide, without feeling in our 
consciences, this is all wrong. The time for you 
and for me to die is the time that God calls us 
hence. We all know that it is wrong, absolutely 
wrong, to commit adultery. There is not a man 
on earth that does not know that he would 
rather have a pure wife, a pure sister, than one 
that has lived in impurity and adultery; and if 
your sister and your wife should be pure women, 
then we know that every woman has a right to 
be pure and live pure, and it seems to me that 
all of us should feel more than we ever had be- 
fore, the necessity of throwing our greatest pro- 
tection and sympathy around all of those that 



58 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

are tempted to live impure lives. God is right 
when He says, Thou shalt not commit adultery, 
and thou shalt not commit fornication. God is 
right when He said, Thou shalt not steal. We 
know that it is wrong for a man to come into 
our homes and take what belongs to us. We 
know that it is wrong for us to take one thing 
that belongs to our neighbor. We know it is 
just as wrong to steal a small quantity as a 
large quantity, and that consequently God is 
right, and gave us a good and holy law when He 
said, Thou shalt not steal. We know it is devil- 
ish to lie, and this idea that some people have 
that one of the commandments broken is a ter- 
rible sin, and that another broken is a little sin, 
is all wrong. A liar in a community may do 
just as much harm in the end as one who breaks 
any other commandment. We know, therefore, 
that the right thing to do is to tell the truth, 
and the wrong thing to do is to tell that which 
is not true. We all know that it is wrong to 
covet that which belongs to our fellow-men; 
those things that have no life, that cannot be 
coaxed away, as houses and homes; we know 
it is wrong to covet those things that have life, 
that can be coaxed away, like man-servants 
or maid-servants, or even cattle. We know, 
heavenly Father, we know, O God, that some 
people in this world are suffering on account of 
the curse that has come down upon them be- 
cause Thou art a good and holy, and a righteous 
God, and because they have not lived in honor 
of Thee and for the welfare of humanity. This, 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 59 

my friends, in a few words, is the law of God 
pronounced perfect and right. 

There is another element in the command- 
ments that you all know. You know that love 
runs through every commandment. Jesus, in 
summing up the first table said, Love the Lord 
your God with all your heart, and with all your 
soul, and with all your mind, and with all your' 
strength; and summing up the second table, 
said, Love your neighbor as yourself. 

3. These commandments, full of love, per- 
fect, are the very ones that make up the law of 
God that has no mercy — no mercy whatever. 
The law of God has no mercy on sinners, and has 
no mercy on the Substitute for sinners. 

I am trying to make the Way plain to you 
tonight. Some people seem to think they are 
going to be saved by the law ; that they are going 
to live good, upright lives, and then when they 
come to die they will pass right on home to the 
Father. I want you all to understand tonight, 
my friends, that the law of God has absolutely 
no mercy on any man, not on the sinner, and not 
on Him who takes the sinner's place, the Sub- 
stitute. I call your attention to Gal. 3 :10 : "For 
;is many as are of the works of the law are under 
the curse; for it is written, Cursed is every one 
that continueth not in all things which are 
written in the Book of the law to do them. 
Cursed is everyone that continueth not in all 
things to do the things that are written in this 
law." James tells us the same great truth in 
another way, namely, "He that offendeth in one 



60 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

point is guilty of all." These ten commandments 
which I have given you tonight from the Word 
of God are ten fingers. As my ten fingers are 
on these two arms, those ten fingers are to the 
two tables of the law; and those two tables of 
the law demand perfection, and never will be 
satisfied with anything less than perfection. 
How shall a man, born in sin, born in the nat- 
ural state, from sinful parents, how shall he 
under that law of perfection ever come out 
saved? Yet if you were born without sin and 
never had committed a single sin, and never 
would commit a sin, yon would be saved by the 
law, and that would be the way; but just be- 
cause you have been born in sin^and just be- 
cause you have offended in one point, and con- 
sequently are guilty of all, and possibly have 
been guilty of all even by offending in all points, 
there is absolutely no hope for you to reach the 
Father by this law. It is not only a curse, but 
a universal curse. Some one may say, I know 
very well that the curse of God must rest upon 
the" blasphemer, upon the low, down-trodden 
drunkard, upon him who goes into our homes 
and ruins them by adultery, upon the low and 
the lost, but that law of God cannot bring any 
curse down upon us good men and good women. 
My dear friends, I say to you tonight that this 
law of God has absolutely no mercy on any 
man on earth, no difference where he is born, 
no difference how good he may think himself 
to be. 

It is not only a universal curse, but it is a 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 6l 

just curse; for when a man has sinned once, he 
has done what Adam and Eve did when they 
ruined the world. When you have broken one 
point of the law you have broken the whole law. 
When you break my one finger, you have hurt 
the whole man, and when you have had one bad 
thought, or have done one bad deed, or have 
said one bad word, you have thereby called down 
the curse of God, justly, upon yourself. 

It is not only a just curse, and a universal 
curse, but it is a fearful curse. It is a fearful 
thing already to have the curse of parents rest- 
ing upon a child; but when you come to think 
that the curse of God is resting upon you as 
long as you are under the law, it is a terrible 
state to be in. 

And it is not only a fearful curse, but it is a 
great curse. Some people seem to think that no 
difference how they live, they are living under 
the mercy of God; that if there ever is a curse 
to come it will come on the Judgment Day. Re- 
member this world is cursed. Cursed is every 
one that hangeth on a tree. Cursed is every one 
that continueth not in all these things which are 
written in the Book of the law to do them. A 
man is cursed right now if he is not saved, and 
the law of God absolutely knows no mercy. 

It is just. It has no mercy even on any in- 
nocent party that steps in and becomes a sub- 
stitute. In Gal. 3:13 we read: "Christ hath 
redeemed us from the curse of the law, being 
made a curse for us : for it is written, Cursed is 
every one that hangeth on a tree." Now the Lord 



(32 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

Jesus Christ is the only person in the world that 
never sinned; nor was He born in sin; but He 
so loved us that He said, I will take the law on 
Myself; I will put Myself under that law just 
the same as sinners are; and just as soon as He 
put Himself under the law of God by circum- 
cision, He began to shed the first blood, and 
from that time on until He breathed His last 
breath on Calvary's hill, the law of God said, 
If Thou, O Lamb of God, art going to become 
the substitute for sinners, then this law has no 
mercy on Thee. And did you ever stop to think 
of the history of Jesus Christ, all that He had 
to suffer, as if He were the most cursed of all 
beings? Why was it He had to sweat drops of 
blood in Gethsemane? Because the law crushed 
Him down to the earth and said, I will have no 
mercy on Thee. Why was it that on the tree of 
Calvary He was hanging there for six long hours, 
bleeding and dying? Because the law of God 
said, Thou art innocent Thyself, but Thou hast 
put Thyself in the place of sinners, in the place 
of those who transgressed, this law, and this law 
will have no rest until death comes; therefore 
drive the nails through His hands and through 
His feet; thrust the sword into His heart; take 
the scourge and lash His back; take the crown 
of thorns and drive it into His forehead; Oh, 
pierce hard and deep; make Him feel not only 
the sins of one man, but of all humanity! Make 
Him feel not only the great curse but the eternal 
curse! Make Him feel what it means to be 
damned and damned forever! Make Him cry 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 63 

out : My God ! My God ! why hast Thou forsaken 
Me? What does it all mean? It means that the 
law of God has absolutely no mercy on the sin- 
ner, nor on the Substitute for sinners. Christ 
had to suffer under the law because He redeemed 
you and me from that law. See if you cannot 
find a beauty in that verse you never saw before : 
"Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the 
law, being made a curse for us; for it is written, 
Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree." 

II. While it is true that without Christ the 
law will condemn you, it is just as true that the 
law drives us to Jesus as the only way to the 
Father. I now quote from Gal. 3 :24 : "Where- 
fore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us 
unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith." 

Why was the law a schoolmaster to bring us 
unto Christ? Why didn't the law drive us out 
to despair, or why did not the law drive us to- 
ward heaven in some other way? Because the 
law knows that what Jesus said is absolutely 
true: I am the Way, the truth, and the life, 
and no man cometh to the Father, but by Me. 
There is no other way, and consequently this 
great law of God, which itself is love, and is so 
just that it has no mercy, says, I will drive you 
to the only place of hope, to your only place of 
escape. When the hounds of hell take after thee 
there is only one tree of safety, and that is the 
tree of the cross. The only place, the only way 
of escape is to come to the Father. 

1. I now call your attention to this great 
truth, that in Jesus only can we see the law's 



$4 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

justice. I have already told you that the law of 
God has no mercy. Now if you want to know 
the real justice of God's holy law, stand on Cal- 
vary's hill; ask yourself the question, Why must 
my Savior suffer as He did? Why did they so 
mistreat Him? The answer comes: Because 
the law of God has no mercy and demands jus- 
tice God had said, "The soul that sinneth, it 
shall die." God never lies. The law never takes 
back one thing that it says. Either Jesus Christ 
had to die, or you and I would have had to 
perish. And so He hangs there for six long hours, 
and at last He breathes His last, and bows His 
head in death, and says to the world, The law 10 
just. Behold what it did to Christ on Calvary! 

2 In Jesus only can we escape the curse of 
the law. When you come up to Calvary's hill 
and know that Christ died for you, then, my 
friends, the law is bound to keep silent. The 
law cannot come to you and to me tonight when 
we take our flight to Christ, and say, You have 
got to perish. When the law says "Thou hast 
sinned," I say, "I know it." When the law says 
to me, "Thou must be damned," I say "No, sir. 
"Well, but the law is just." "I know it. But 
here hangs my Savior, and my Savior has paid 
the debt for my sins. You cannot collect it twice. 
Here is my Savior, and He says that if I am bap- 
tized into Christ I have put on Christ, and in- 
asmuch as He is my Substitute, and has called 
me to come to Him, I have come; I have accepted 
Him ; I have taken my flight to Him." 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 65 



"In my hands no price I bring; 
Simply to Thy cross I cling." 



"And now the curse must escape. Thou 
canst not condemn me and Him also." There- 
fore Jesus is the only way, the only way ever to 
get free from the curse of God that rests upon 
you. 

3. In Him only can toe find the law as our 
beautiful guide. Some one may say, If we can- 
not keep the laAv perfectly, if even the best 
Christian cannot keep it perfectly, then why 
have we got it? My dear friend, you do know 
that no Christian ever did keep that law per- 
fectly. God's own Word says, "There is not a 
just man upon earth that doeth good and sin- 
neth not." One of the best men that ever lived, 
said, "If we say we have not sinned we make 
Him a liar and the truth is not in us." That 
man simply does not know what the law is that 
believes he has reached such perfection that he 
never does any wrong, in thought, or word, or 
deed, any more. Then pray tell me, if we can- 
not keep that law perfectly, even though we aim 
ever so bard to do so, why have we got it? Let 
us not forget that this law is here for a double 
purpose. It is here in the first place to show 
us our sin, and then to drive us to Christ, that 
in Him we may escape the curse and find the 
Substitute that took away our sins. Then in 
Christ we see this law a second time as a guide 
to show us how to live, not in order that we 
may be saved, but because we are saved, 

5 



66 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

in order that we may do the works that are 
pleasing to God. The Bible says, "Thy Word is 
a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path." 
I do not remember the Sabbath Day to keep it 
holy because thereby I can be saved, but Jesus 
Christ has saved me, and therefore I am going 
to try with all my might to keep that law. The 
Lord Jesus Christ laid down these command- 
ments because they are right and good, and 
therefore on the Way, which is Christ, it becomes 
my duty to carry these commandments like a 
lamp in my hands, and live up to them day by 
day. Therefore you cannot be a Christian and 
go and crucify your Lord again by trying to 
commit a sin. You must now escape from the 
wrath of God and walk on the path of right- 
eousness. In Him only can we find the law then 
as our beautiful guide. For that reason we 
as Christian people should study that law every 
day of our lives, as Moses said the parents should 
teach their children in the morning when they 
rise, when they sit down, when on the highway, 
and see these commandments written on the ends 
of their fingers, and on their foreheads, and up 
over the doors, everywhere they should see these 
commandments, and know them, that they might 
walk according to them. 

I have promised to answer any questions 
that you might put into this Question Box, that 
we may make the Way plain as we go along, and 
I find quite a number this evening : 

Question No. 1. If parents that believe m 
baptism have a child, and they do intend to have 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 67 

that child baptized, but keep putting it off from 
time to time; then they decide on a certain date 
not far in the future to have the child baptized 
surely, but death comes suddenly and the child 
is not baptized, will either child or parents be 
punished because the child was not baptized? 
Is not an innocent baby's soul precious enough 
that (iod would save it, even though we neglect 
to have it baptized? 

Answer: It is the opinion of the Lutheran 
Church that God will condemn no child. It is 
absolutely taught in the Bible that no one 
can be saved without the new birth by water 
and the Spirit. If you ask me the question, 
Are parents responsible for putting off from 
time to time what should be done today? I surely 
answer, There is a responsibility there. Ke- 
member, however, that we are not judges. It 
is not for me as pastor to say what that punish- 
ment would be. When the question arises as 
to whetlier the child shall suffer and die, I will 
say that that is never the question. Let me give 
an illustration. Suppose in your own home you 
had a little daughter lying at the point of death 
with typhoid fever, needing a physician, very 
thirsty, calling for water to drink; no medicine, 
no doctor; no nurse; no help; suppose that child 
dies; the question arises now, Ts it the child's 
fault? What would become of a child in that 
condition, without these helps that I have been 
speaking of? When the child does die, whose 
fault is it? Who is to be censured? Surely the 
parent that refused to call a physician; refused 



6g THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

to give the medicine ; refused to give that child 
a drink. There you have an illustration of what 
ought to be done with the parents when they 
refuse to bring their child to God, as God 
says they shall ; when they refuse to have it born 
again by water and the Spirit, as Jesus said to 
Nicodemus. When they refuse to take care of 
the child's soul, the question is never in my mind, 
what will become of the child, but what will be- 
come of such ungodly parents? And surely when 
we discover our sin, there is just one thing to 
do, and that is to repent, and God will forgive. 
Question No. 2. What is your theory con- 
cerning hell? c - M - 

Answer : My theory is exactly the theory of 
Jesus Christ. He said: He that believeth and 
is baptized shall be saved; and he that believeth 
not shall be damned. Again He says: Their 
worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be 
quenched. The smoke of their torment ascend- 
eth up forever and ever. That is God's way of 
telling what hell is. In another place He tells 
us that one who was there cried out : "I am in 
torment!" and asked for a drop of water to cool 
his burning tongue. When you ask me to de- 
scribe hell more fully than God has done, I can- 
not do it, and I never want to know any more 
about hell than I do tonight. The thing for you 
and me to do is to accept the Lord Jesus Christ ; 
get on the only Way, and never know anything 
more about hell than we know now. 

Question No. 3. Is it wrong for a wife to sue 
for divorce from a drunken, brutal husband, or 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 69 

one who will not suport his off-spring; and is it 
wrong for her to marry another? Should a man 
or woman marry after securing divorce on the 
ground of adultery? C. M. 

Answer : As far as the first question is con- 
cerned, I would say it is hard to define what a 
real brutal husband is. There are cases before 
the courts where women have sued for divorce 
because of the brutality of their husbands, when 
the husband simply did things that any decent 
husband would do. What I wish to correct here 
is the idea that just a little misunderstanding 
in a home is brutal ; or that for every little trial 
that comes in the home, we ought at once to go 
and sue for divorce. However, it is the plainest 
commandment in the world for every one to 
defend his or her life, and in case of a wife being 
so brutally handled that her life is in danger, 
she surely has a right to appeal to the law. She 
need not ask for a divorce. She can have peace 
without a divorce. The law will protect her. 
There is only one reason given in the Scriptures 
for divorce, and that is adultery; and the only 
one that has the right to marry after such a 
divorce is the innocent party. 

Question No. .). What is your idea in regard 
to a materialist? Can a materialist enter the 
kingdom of heaven? 

Answer : He can after he repents and comes 
to Christ, not as a materialist. A materialist 
is one of two kinds. There is what we call per- 
fect materialism, and imperfect materialism. 
Perfect materialism regards but one substance in 



70 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

the universe, and that is matter, doing away en- 
tirely with the idea of a personal God. That is 
as near atheism as anything can be found. The 
imperfect materialism goes just a step further 
toward truth, and yet is far away from the truth, 
and that is, that the universe must have a spirit 
and man none, or that man must have a spirit 
in him, and the universe none; in either way 
there is no personal God. The only people on 
earth who are real materialists are the Budd- 
hists and their followers. The Buddhists are 
the nearest atheists in the world. An atheist 
is the man who says there is no God. The mater- 
ialist says that all substance is matter, and mat- 
ter has all the God there is in itself; and conse- 
quently they live right on — just the opposite of 
Spiritualism — and say, We are just a bunch 
of clav and that is the end of it. If that kind of 
a man could reach the kingdom of heaven with- 
out repentance, there would be no use talking 
about a Savior, and Christ being the Way; so 
my answer is, No. 

Question No. 5. Who was Cain's wife? 
Answer: I would not answer that at all, if 
it were not one of those fool questions that have 
been asked for ages. The object of the ques- 
tion is to show that it was impossible for him 
to have a wife because he was the brother 
of Abel, and was sent out when there was no 
wife for anybody ; that is the theory. The fools 
that are asking that question forget that in 
those davs the people lived to the age of nearly 
a thousand years. And they forget another 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 71 

thing, that by the time Cain surely did marry, 
there must have been at least five thousand six 
hundred wives for him to make a choice from. 
My answer is that it was one of those five thou- 
sand six hundred. I don't remember her name. 
I wasn't there. 

Question No. 6. We frequently hear it said, 
"I am sorry I did so, and if I had my life to live 
over I should do different." Does the Christian 
need to sorrow over past sins forgiven? D. S. 

Answer: I think the case of David answers 
this very nicely. David committed a great sin. 
It never occurred to him how great the sin was 
until it was bound to be found out. That is the 
way it is today yet. A great many people go on 
sinning and live just as though everything is all 
right until it is going to be found out ; then they 
think it is an awful sin. David did not seem to 
know that he had sinned as he had. At last God 
opened his eyes by a little parable. He said 
there was a man who had a large number of 
sheep ; another one had but one little lamb. The 
man that had the many sheep received company, 
and instead of killing one of his own flock, he 
went over and killed the only little lamb his 
neighbor had. Oh, that aroused the ire of David. 
He said, That man has got to be killed. Nathan 
said: "Thou art the man!" David had been 
doing that very thing himself and did not know 
it. He robbed Uriah of his only wife and had 
the husband killed, and all that time seemed to 
think, it is all right, but when God showed him 
that he is the man that ought to die for the awful 



72 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

crime he committed, then he began to repent; 
then he saw his awful mistake; then he got 
down and wept for his sins, and God said, I will 
forgive thee, but that little child has got to die — 
die, though the man was forgiven. And after 
that, David wrote those beautiful Psalms of re- 
pentance. In other words, David repented all 
his life for the sins he had committed, though 
they were forgiven. It is our duty to repent 
that we are born in original sin. It is our 
duty to repent for every sin that we have 
ever committed, no difference though they are 
forgiven. Can you ever get away from it? I 
believe it is a good thing we should repent over 
the sins God has already wiped out. 

Question No. 7. Does the Bible tell us it is 
wrong to have more than one wife, or husband? 
Many old Bible characters had more than one 
wife, for they are referred to as wives, showing 
the plural. C. M. 

Answer: That there were people in Old Tes- 
tament times who had more than one wife, is 
true. That there were men in Old Testament 
times that got drunk, is true. That there were 
men in Old Testament times that committed 
adultery, is true. That there were men who 
committed great sins, and God recorded them, 
is true. It is nowhere recorded that God ever 
said a man should have more than one wife. It 
is shown in the Bible conclusively that God does 
not want any man to have more than one wife. 
When He created Adam, He did not make two 
wives for him, but one, and said, this was flesh 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 73 

of his flesh and bone of his bone, and they should 
cling together until death. When God started 
the world the second time, after the flood, or 
during the flood, He started it with four men : 
Noah, Shem, Ham, Japheth. Noah had one 
wife; Shem had one; Ham had one, and Japheth 
had one. If God wanted men to have more than 
one wife, He would have given each one two to 
start with. Isn't that plain? And Jesus Christ 
said, a man shall cling unto his wife, and they 
twain shall be one flesh. He did not say, they 
six shall be one flesh — they two shall be one 
flesh. So there is no trouble at all about know- 
ing what God teaches concerning marriage. 

Question No. 8. How do you account for so 
many doctors and lawyers being no church mem- 
bers? They are inteligent men as a rule. J. F. 

Answer: So is the devil intelligent. Intelli- 
gence does not make a man a Christian. If any 
of you had been around medical colleges as much 
as I have, and would know what kind of lives 
the majority of medical students live, you would 
understand why most of the doctors are not 
Christians. There never was a real good, honest 
doctor who would not like to be a Christian. 
And then if you understand, furthermore, why 
it is that some of your lawyers do not come to 
church; if you knew what God knows about 
those lawyers; if you knew what kind of lives 
a few of them are living, you would soon know 
the answer. God have mercy on a few of the 
innocent girls of this city! That is all I have 
to say on that question. The best honest law- 



74 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

yers in the world are Christians, and so are the 
doctors. 

Question No. .9. If a man believes in God, 
even if he is not baptized, and is no church mem- 
ber, is he lost? L. T. 

Answer: Pray tell me, how can he believe in 
God and not be baptized? How can he believe 
in God and be no church member, when God 
says: Go ye into all the world and make dis- 
ciples of all nations, baptizing them into the 
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the 
Holy Ghost? God says: He that is of God 
heareth God's words ; ye therefore hear them not 
because ye are not of God. Just as long as a 
man is not willing to be baptized, and just as 
long as he does not want to hear God's Word, 
he simply is lying when he says he does believe 
in God. 

Question No. 10. Is it right for parents to 
coax a son to unite with a church when it makes 
him mad? 

Answer: I have an idea that is some boy that 
got mad because his mother asked him to come 
here, or because she wanted him to be a Chris- 
tian. The question itself is its answer. Why 
should a boy become angry because his mother 
wants him to be a Christian? The very fact that 
lie does get angry shows that he is in a bad state ; 
the very fact that he does get angry shows that 
his mother knows that he ought to be a different 
boy. But now to encourage the mother to keep 
on asking, I want to refer to one little thing 
that took place yesterday morning. There is a 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 75 

man sitting before me tonight who said to me — 
and I know he will pardon me for making use 
of this, for I will not mention his name — "I 
really have not got time to go on Thursday even- 
ing; it is my busy evening in the week, but," 
he said, "I am going to find time, for it was al- 
ways my mother's wish that I should be a Chris- 
tian," and right there he broke down and cried; 
and I walked away and thanked God for that 
mother that coaxed that boy. She is dead and 
in heaven now, but she rejoices over the fact 
that he is here tonight. And I want to say to 
you as parents, you want to coax those boys, — 
not only coax, but speak, and pray, and plead 
with them ; and do not think because you die and 
they are not saved, that they will forget what 
you said. I know from my own experience that 
my mother has done as much, a thousand times 
more good, since in heaven than she did while 
living. Then we remember what mother said; 
then we remember what our mothers did; and 
when a man knows his mother is in heaven, he 
lias got to be the ungodliest of all ungodly, if he 
does not try to find the way that mother went. 

May God bless the answers to these ques- 
tions, and lead us all into deeper truths, and 
stay right on the narrow way that leads to hea- 
ven, is my prayer. Amen. 



76 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

Prayer. 

O God, our heavenly Father, we ask Thy bless- 
ing upon the message of the evening. We know 
that when there are many roads to travel, we 
are liable to lose one or the other, but when 
there is only one Way, we cannot lose ourselves. 
O God, we thank Thee that the Way is so plain, 
and that this Way is no other than Jesus Christ, 
the Way, the Truth, and the Life; and we thank 
Thee that none has ever started out on this Way 
without reaching heaven and the Father, when 
he desired to remain faithful until death. We 
ask Thee now Lord our God, that Thou wilt 
move every one of us in this house tonight to be 
honest with our own souls, honest in our investi- 
gation, to search for the truth, and live accord- 
ing to it. O God, we pray Thee for a coming 
Pentecost. We ask Thee to multiply the number 
of Thy servants in this community. We pray 
Thee that the church at large may sever itself 
from the ungodly world, and come out and labor 
for the extension of Thy kingdom. Lord God, 
bless Thy servant, and those who have given 
these questions for honest answers; and bless 
the hands that are recording this message at 
this hour, and we pray Thee, O God, that this 
simple message to make the Way plain, may 
speak to hundreds and thousands, and even mill- 
ions, long after Thy servant's tongue is silent 
in this world. Lord, bless this congregation to- 
night. Help that the Way may be plain to our 
souls, and made plain by Thy Holy Spirit. We 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 77 

ask this in the name of Jesus, who taught us to 
pray: 

Our Father, who art in heaven : Hallowed be 
Thy name: Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done 
on earth as it is in heaven ; Give us this day our 
daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we 
forgive those who trespass against us; Lead us, 
not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: 
For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and 
the glory, forever and ever, Amen. 



FAITH KNOWS NO OTHER WAY. 
JOHN 14:4-6. 



And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know. 
Thomas said unto Him. Lord, we know not whither Thou 
goest; and how can we know the way? Jesus saith unto 
him, I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life: no man 
cometh unto the Father but by Me. 



Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy Truth: 
Thy Word is Truth. Amen. 



Dear Christian Friends: — 

Surely when an immortal soul asks the ques- 
tion, "How can I reach the Father; how can I 
reach my heavenly home?'' it becomes my duty 
as a responsible minister of the Gospel to give 
you a plain answer that cannot be misunder- 
stood. I am glad to say that fifty-nine have 
signed their names to these cards in order to 
have me to answer that question, Which is the 
way? While there may be a few of these who 
have long ago learned the way, the most of them 
want to know more fully. Before you leave this 
audience tonight, if you are not a member of 
the Christian Church, or even if you are, if you 

(78) 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 79 

are not well informed on the Way made plain, 
I hope you will sign one of these cards.* 

To the Pastor of the First Lutheran Church, Mansfield, Ohio: 
I hereby signify my intention, by God's help, to unite 
with your first Catechetical Class, after this date, to learn 
and obey God's saving truth. Name 

Jesus tells us in the words of my text, that 
He is the only Way that leads to the Father. I 
have already shown you that the Bible knows no 
other way; that the law of God knows no other 
way. If you expect to find the heavenly Father 
through the ten commandments, those command- 
ments will never bring you to Him, unless you 
go to Jesus Christ. I desire to show you tonight 
that the Apostle's Creed knows no other way 
than simply to show you Jesus Christ. While 
the Ten Commandents are law, the Creed is 
taken from the Gospel. 

The Gospel is the good news that Jesus 
Christ has come into the world to save sinners, 
and through faith to make them forever blessed. 
The difference between the law and the Gospel 
is plain. The law condemns you, and the Gos- 
pel offers you salvation. The law is the knife 
that cuts the wound open; the Gospel is the 
healing balm, the healing salve, that you place 
upon that wound to restore yon to health and 
strength. 



*Every sermon in the first Lutheran Church is a plea 
for souls. While one class is being instructed, others are 
invited to sign the above card. 



80 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

Having shown you the difference between the 
law and the Gospel, I would have you to under- 
stand that the substance of the Apostles' Creed 
can be summed up in two words : It shows you 
God's essence, and God's holy will. In the Apos- 
tles' Creed with its three articles, treating- of 
creation, redemption, and sanctification, or of 
the three persons of God, the Father, Son, and 
the Holy Ghost, you learn to know who the true 
and living God is; that God is a Spirit; that He 
is only one God, and that this one God is the 
Father, Son and Holy Ghost, three persons in 
One. This Triune God we see and hear at the 
baptism of Jesus Christ. Jesus, the one person, 
stands in the water ; the Holy Spirit comes down 
in the form of a dove; and the Father speaks 
from heaven, saying, "This is My beloved Son, 
in whom I am well pleased." This Triune God 
knows no other way except the one that is shown 
in the Creed, Jesus Christ. 

FAITH KNOWS NO OTHER WAY. 

Let me show you this, 

I. By Creation; 
II. By Redemption; 
III. By Sanctification. 

I. The Father knows no other way. If the 
Father knew any other way to save man, do yon 
suppose He would have given up His only be- 
gotten Son to come down here into this world, 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 81 

put Himself under the law, and bleed and die 
for us? Do you suppose the Father's love ever 
would have tolerated that Jesus Christ should 
be slaughtered on Calvary's hill like a lamb, if 
there was some other way for you to reach hea- 
ven? We say in the first article of the Creed: 
"I believe in God the Father, Almighty Maker of 
heaven and earth." Of all His creatures, some 
can be seen and some cannot. The chief of these 
that cannot be seen are angels ; and of those that 
can be seen, the chief is man. Among the angels 
there are none that know of any other way. 

The good angels know no other way except 
Jesus Christ. The Palmist says : "Are they not 
ministering spirits, sent forth to minister unto 
them who shall be heirs of salvation?" If there 
were salvation any other way except through 
Jesus Christ, do you suppose that the heavenly 
host would have left their home on high to sing 
to the shepherds when Jesus Christ was born? 
If there were salvation any other way except 
through Jesus Christ, do you suppose that God 
would have sent that angel to strengthen Jesus 
Christ when He was down in the garden of 
Getlisemane? And do you suppose He would 
have sent an angel to roll the stone away from 
the sepulchre when He arose from the dead? 
And do you suppose that the angels would have 
ascended with Jesus Christ, and are coming 
again when He comes to judge the quick and the 
dead, if they knew any other way? The angels 
of God, my friends, know no other way to the 

6 



82 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

Father, except by the Lord Jesus Christ. In 
the picture of the ladder of Jacob, you remem- 
ber that Jacob saw the angels ascending and 
descending on that ladder, and we are told 
in this same Gospel of John that Jesus is 
the fulfillment of that type, that the angels 
of God ascended and descended on Jesus 
Christ. In other words, if it were not for 
Jesus Christ, no angel would ever have found 
his way to this earth. It is by Him, the only 
Way, that the angels go up and down from the 
throne on high here to this earth on which we 
live. 

And what is true of the good angels, is just 
as true of the bad. We are told that there were 
angels that did not keep their first estate; we 
are told that they abode not in the truth. God 
did not create devils. He created good angels, 
but a good angel became a devil, as a good man 
may become a devilish man. Now these bad 
angels know no other way except Jesus Christ. 
If the bad angels and the devil knew that there 
was some other way to be saved outside of Christ, 
why would they have possessed men as they did 
during the days of Christ's ministry? Why 
would the devil be so interested in you today 
when you want to be a Christian? Just the 
moment that you decide that you want to be- 
come a Christian, your bad friends will stand by 
your side and mock you, and sneer at you, and 
if you had your eyes open, you could see the very 
devil in them trying to keep you away from the 
only Way that leads to heaven. A man sneering 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 83 

the other day said, "There are so many hypo- 
crites in the Christian Chnrch ;" the man sitting 
by his side said. "You are an infidel, and we 
never hear people talking about hypocrites in 
your company. You are passing a compliment 
on the Christian Church. You and your tribe 
have no hypocrites; you cannot have them." Do 
you see the difference? The angels in hell as 
well as the angels from heaven, know no other 
way except through Jesus Christ. 

You ask me tonight, How can I come home 
to my Father? How can I go home to heaven? 
There is no other way except Jesus Christ. 
Even man knows no other way. God not 
only created angels, but He created man in His 
own image. Man fell in his sin, and ever since 
that he has been a fallen man. The fallen man 
has been trying time and again to find some 
way home, outside of Jesus Christ. About ten 
years ago we had in the city of Chicago a great 
Parliament of Religions. All the religions of the 
world were called together into one congress, 
and when it came to the question in that great 
congress, How are souls saved? there was only 
one religion that could answer the question. All 
the false religions of the world had no answer 
to the question, How can a man go home to the 
Father? But the Christian Church had the 
answer. Jesns said : "I am the Way, the Truth, 
and the Life, and no man cometh unto the 
Father but by Me." Man knows no other way. 
If you know of any other way tonight to heaven, 



84 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

pray tell nie. Where is it? Where is it re- 
corded? Who ever went any other way? 

It is not only true that man knows no other 
way ; it is just as true that Providence knows no 
other way. "In Him do all things consist" says 
the Word of God. "All things work together for 
good to them that love God." Everything works 
for your good if you love God, and if you do not 
love God, everything works against you. And 
when a man has Almighty God against him, 
how can he succeed? The idea of men thinking 
that they can be successful and be no Chris- 
tians! You might as well try to successfully 
bump your head against the Rocky Mountains, 
trying to push them into the Pacific Ocean, as 
to try to break through the almighty arms of 
the Almighty God against His will. Providence 
stands back of every man that loves God and 
pushes him to success. The almighty hand of 
God is against every man that does not come to 
the Father in the right way. 

II. In the second article of the Creed we 
confess that we believe in Jesus Christ, His only 
Son, our Lord, who was conceived of the Holy 
Ghost, born of the virgin Mary, suffered under 
Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried. 
He descended into hell; and on the third day 
He rose again from the dead. He ascended into 
heaven, and sitteth on the right-hand of God 
the Father Almighty, from thence He shall come 
to judge the quick and the dead. Now in that 
whole second article of Redemption, you do not 
find one word that will show the way to heaven 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 85 

except through Jesus Christ. In this second 
article of the Creed you find the center of the 
Bible, the center of the catechism, the center of 
these Scriptures that I am giving you now, — 
He is the Way, and without Him there is no 
other. 

The Son of God knows no other way. Do 
you suppose, my friends, that Jesus Christ Him- 
self would have come down here on earth and 
been like a slave for thirty-three years, and 
spend the last three years of His life not even 
having a place to lay His head ; do you suppose 
He would have worn the crown of thorns, when 
He might have worn the golden crown in His 
eternal home; do you suppose He would have 
taken the scourges of man upon His back when 
He could have been sitting at home in honor; 
do you suppose He would have had His hands 
and His feet pierced, if there had been some 
other way to get to heaven? I preach to you a 
dying Lord to save dying and perishing man. 
God the Son knew no other way. The wages of 
sin is death. A man is worth more than all the 
world. One man lost, more than a world lost. 
If this congregation were lost tonight, it would 
be more lost than five hundred worlds like the 
one that we live in, and none but the Almighty 
God, with His only heir, Jesus Christ, could 
pay the debt. Jesus knows no other way. 

Not only does His divine nature know no 
other way, but His human nature knows no other 
way. Jesus Christ became man — why? Be- 
cause a Savior had to put Himself under the 



86 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

law. He had to become man in order to become 
man's substitute. Now if He knew of any other 
way as man, He would not have become the God- 
man. 

Christ's Office knows no other way. We are 
taught in this Creed that the office of Jesus 
Christ is this : That He is the one Mediator be- 
tween God and man — the man, Christ Jesus. You 
know what a mediator means. If one man is at 
variance with another, and I come in the mid- 
dle and make peace between those two, I am a 
mediator. God the Father in heaven is one 
party, and man on earth is the other party ; and 
so the Son of God, being God, is the right One 
to take hold of the Father's hand, and being 
man, is the right One to take hold of your hand, 
and with His human hand in your human hand, 
and His Divine hand in the Father's hand, He is 
the one Mediator between God and Man, the only 
Way, and seeing this, He cries out : The Son of 
Man is come to seek and to save that which was 
lost ! The only Way to heaven — the only Way 
He knows by His office. 

He has three different official names. He is 
called the Prophet, because He made known to 
us the will of the Father. As Prophet He knows 
no other way. He is called the High Priest. The 
High Priest offered the sacrifice of the lamb. 
Jesus Christ is the great High Priest, and offered 
Himself. He knows no other way. Another 
official name is King. Jesus Christ is King of 
kings and Lord of lords, but the great King 
knows no other way. 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 87 

This is not only true of His office, but this 
is the testimony of His state of humiliation. 
The Lord Jesus Christ, as you all know, per- 
formed His office in two states. We say in ex- 
planation of this Creed, I believe that Jesus 
Christ descended into hell. There we begin the 
state of exaltation; but from His conception to 
His descent into hell, is His humiliation. Why 
did God allow Himself to become man? Why 
did He allow Himself to suffer under Pontius 
Pilate? Why did He allow such a picture to go 
before the world as Jesus standing before Pilate, 
when the time is coming that Pilate will stand 
before Jesus Christ? Why did He go down to 
the grave and there sleep in a borrowed tomb? 
Why? Because He knew that there was no other 
way but the state of humiliation by which He 
might get ready for that great state of exalta- 
tion. 

When we confess in this Creed: I believe 
that Jesus Christ descended into hell, we mean 
exactly what we say. We do not mean He went 
down to hell to suffer. His sufferings ended on 
Calvary. But we do mean He went down there 
to conquer the devil ; that He went there to con- 
quer all the powers of hell, and to show that 
He was the Conqueror. And therefore He came 
forth and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on 
the right hand of God the Father Almighty, 
from whence He shall come to judge the quick 
and the dead. Why would He want to judge the 
quick and the dead if there were some other way? 
Why would He be sitting at the right hand of 



88 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

God, if there were some other way? There is no 
other way. 

III. Not only is this the testimony of His 
state of humiliation and His state of exaltation, 
but I find that when we come to the third article 
of the Creed, we have the same answer. We say 
in that article: I believe in the Holy Ghost; 
the Holy Christian Church, the communion of 
saints; the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection 
of the body; and the life everlasting. Amen. 

I believe in the Holy Ghost. What do you 
believe about the Holy Ghost? You believe that 
He is the third person of the Godhead ; that the 
Holy Ghost has given us the Scriptures. You 
believe the Holy Ghost comes to us through His 
Word and the Holy Sacraments. You believe 
that wherever this Word is the Holy Spirit is. 
You believe that when you are baptized in the 
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the 
Holy Ghost, that there the Holy Ghost comes to 
you. When you go to the Lord's Supper where 
the words of the Holy Spirit, and bread and 
wine are given to you, and it is said: Take 
eat, this is My body which was broken for you; 
and take drink, this is My blood, which was 
shed for the remission of your sins, it is said by 
Him who is the only Way, Jesus Christ. The 
Holy Spirit knows no other way, except Jesus. 
That is the only way to heaven. 

And how does the Holy Spirit come to us? 
He comes to us in the means of grace. And 
where are they? They are found in the Church. 
And therefore we say: I believe in the Holy 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 89 

Christian Church. We do not believe that the 
Christian Church is made up of wood or stone; 
we do not believe the Christian Church is made 
up of buildings; we do not believe that a few 
people have the right to assume that name and 
apply it to themselves ; but we believe that God 
Almighty has a Church on earth, and that this 
Church consists of true believers in the Lord 
Jesus Christ, the only Way that leads to hea- 
ven, and the Church knows no other way. If 
the Church of God knew any other Way except 
Christ, we would close our doors, and stop our 
Sunday Schools, and stop our catechetical in- 
struction and preaching, and we would go out 
and do something else. There is no other way 
for me to reach heaven except through Jesus 
Christ; there is no other way for my church 
members to reach heaven except through Jesus 
Christ; and I, knowing this, knowing it just as 
truly as God cannot lie, I live and I pray, and I 
appeal to men that they may know the Savior, 
and come in time to the Lord Jesus Christ and 
be saved. The Church knows no other way. 

And I would go a step further, and say, that 
there is no other way in which we have the prom- 
ise of forgiveness. God the Father cannot for- 
give a sinner's sin unless it is atoned for; and 
God the Father cannot forgive a sinner's sin 
unless the one that is forgiven accepts that 
atonement. God the Holy Spirit cannot calJ 
any to salvation unless He calls him to Christ 
and Him crucified. The debt must be paid. 
Jesus paid it, and the Holy Spirit makes the 



90 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

plea. Consequently you will find that on the 
day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit held up Christ 
crucified and risen from the dead as the only 
Savior of the world. That is what we mean 
when we say we are justified by faith. That is 
what we mean when we say we believe in the 
forgiveness of sins. We do not think our going 
to church will take us to heaven; we do not 
mean that because we have paid our debts we 
are going to heaven, or because we do not chew 
tobacco, or smoke, or drink, we are going to 
heaven. No. We believe this, that every man 
is a lost man, and he will be lost until he accepts 
the Savior ; and the only way to accept the Sav- 
ior is simply to say, I trust in Him as my Sub- 
stitute, and my Redeemer and the only Way. 
Father, take me on the only Way! That is sal- 
vation; and the moment you hold to Christ as 
the only Way, God says, I will forgive you for 
Christ's sake; and that is justification by faith, 
and that is peace, and it is the only way you will 
ever get peace. Your trying to get to heaven by 
your own good works does not work; it does 
not work three hours in a day. You start out 
in the morning thinking, I am going to be a 
pretty good man, and before nine o'clock you 
have blundered, and you have no peace. The 
thing to do is simply to acknowledge yourself 
as a poor, lost, condemned, helpless sinner. Here, 
Christ, I am. "In my hands no price I bring; 
simply to Thy cross I cling." That is my peace 
and my salvation. 

The resurrection of the body knows no other 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 91 

way. We say: I believe in the resurrection of 
the body. Why do we believe that? We believe 
it because Jesus Christ said that He was the 
Kesurrection and the Life, and that he that be- 
lieveth in Him, though he were dead, yet shall 
he live. We believe that because Jesus Christ 
Himself raised Lazarus from the dead. We be- 
lieve it because Jesus Christ Himself when in 
the grave arose from the dead. We believe it 
because He has taught it throughout His Word 
that He will come like a thief in the night and 
shall raise us all from the dead. "Many that 
sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some 
to everlasting life, and some to shame and ever- 
lasting contempt," were the words of the pro- 
phet Daniel, and the same were verified in the 
New Testament by the resurrection of Lazarus 
as well as Jesus Christ Himself. 

Now when you rise from the dead you will 
find that the only Way to heaven will be your 
Judge. If you could stay in the grave forever, 
we would stop preaching; but "every knee shall 
bow before Him, of things in heaven and on 
earth and of things under the earth." It may 
be that you have never bent your knees in prayer, 
but let me tell you, you are going to bend the 
knee before Jesus Christ, and you are going to 
acknowledge that He is the only Way. If you 
will not do it while living, you will do it on the 
Judgment Day. 

There is no other Way. Eternal life knows 
no other way. We believe in life everlasting. 
Jesus said, "He that hath the Son hath life. 



92 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

He that hath not the Son hath not life." When 
we examine the words of our text again, we 
there see that there is no other way. Jesus 
saith unto him : I am the Way, and the Truth, 
and the Life, and no man cometh unto the Father 
but by Me." "Be thou faithful unto death and 
thou shalt receive the crown of eternal life." 
Those that will not accept Him, what shall be- 
come of them? He that believeth not shall be 
«lam ned. There is no other answer. Do not 
think that God is unkind to you, when He so 
loved you a* to become man and lay down His 
life for you, and bleed and die, and establish 
His Church, and call and plead with you, and 
semi the Holy Spirit to appeal to you, with the 
voice of earnestness, and with prayerful voice, 
that yon shall come to Him and be saved. When 
this invitation is extended time and again and 
at last you refuse to accept Him, and you are 
lost and damned, the cry of your own soul in 
all eternity will be: I am lost and damned, and 
I have damned myself. God came to save you. 
He is ihe only Way. May God help you tonight 
to accept Him by faith; for this is the only 
answer that the Creed knows. 



Question No. 1. If Easter is celebrated as 
the resurrection of Christ, why is there not a 
fixed date? 

Answer: I would say there is a fixed date. 
The fixed date is on the first Sunday after the 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 93 

full moon after the vernal equinox, and that is 
always fixed. 

Question No. 2. Can one be a Christian and 
play cards, and dance, bowl, or even deliberately 
be where these and other worldly amusements 
are going on? 

Answer: He that believeth and is baptized 
shall be saved. It does not say that he that has 
got a strong faith and is baptized, but he that 
has faith in Christ. There are weak Christians 
and there are strong Christians. There are 
weak Christians who cannot see as well as 
strongly enlightened Christians. I would answer 
that question in this way : A really well en- 
lightened Christian would not go to these places 
for three reasons : In the first place, he would 
not love to go because he would learn to love 
something else better. In the second place, he 
would not go, because he could not find the time. 
In the third place, he would not go because he 
would not throw his influence on the side of the 
world and the devil. But I should not say that 
a man that does these things out of weakness 
is certainly to be lost. He is a weak Christian 
and in a dangerous position. 

Question No. 3. How could God give His 
Son to the world if God and Jesus are One? 
Jesus reigned in heaven before He came to earth. 
If Jesus and God are One, how could Jesus be 
here and the Father in heaven? 

Answer: God is omnipresent. He is not in 
heaven in the sense that He is not on earth ; 
nor on earth in the sense that He is not 



94 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

in heaven. How can Jesus today be in 
heaven, and yet be here? Where two or 
three are gathered together in My name, I 
will be in the midst of them. Undoubt- 
edly you do not understand the omniscience and 
omnipresence of God. And as far as being One, 
He is One in essence, and three persons. God 
did not promise to make you comprehend this, 
but asks you to believe Him. I can have one 
sack of fruit. In that one sack there may 
be apples, pears, and peaches; the apple is 
not the pear, nor the pear the peach, yet it is all 
under the head of fruit. Each one has its place. 
There is one God, but this one God is the Father, 
Son, and Holy Ghost. Just because He is omni- 
present He can be in heaven and here, and the 
same God takes part in all three articles of the 
creed. If that is not satisfactory, come around 
and we will have a talk about it. 

Question No. J h Could a loving God punish 
us even if we do not believe in Him? 

Answer: I will put another question. Can 
a loving mother punish the child that she loves? 
If she did not love the child she would not pun- 
ish him. If she does love the child she will de- 
mand obedience. Just because God does love us 
He must punish us if we do not accept Him. It 
could not be otherwise. 

Question No. 5. The Bible tells us that God 
made man in His own likeness. If God is a 
Spirit and not a personal God, why is not man 
a spirit? 

Answer: Who said God was not a personal 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 95 

God? We have just been telling you this even- 
ing that He has three persons, The Father, Son, 
and Holy Ghost, and consequently He created 
man with a body, soul, and spirit, in the very 
image of Himself. We are taught in the New 
Testament that we are renewed in the spirit of 
righteousness, knowledge and true holiness. The 
renewal brings us back to the original image, 
which consists of these three things, righteous- 
ness, knowledge and true holiness. God is a 
personal God, and therefore we need not answer 
that question. 

Question No. 6. Shall we know each other 
in heaven as we do here? 

Answer: A man's wife asked him that ques- 
tion one time and he said, "Jane, do you suppose 
I will be dumber in heaven than I am here? I 
know you here and ought to know you there." 

Question No. 7. How can a person get an- 
other who belongs to the same church, to speak, 
who has had no cause whatever for getting 
angry? She passes me in church and will not 
let me speak to her. 

Answer: You find the answer to that ques- 
tion in Matthew, the 18th chapter. You go 
right to that person's house and make an at- 
tempt yourself to speak to her. If she refuses 
to make up or to speak, take one of the church 
members with you the next time; if she will not 
speak then, tell it to the church, and if she will 
not come and make a perfect explanation before 
the church, God says she shall be put out and 



96 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

considered a heathen and a publican. That is 
God's answer to that question. 

Question No. 8. People go on Sunday excur- 
sions because cheap rates are offered, and they 
hare no recreation on week days. Can they do 
this and not break the law of God? 

Answer: Did Jesus say anywhere, Remem- 
ber the Sabbath day to keep it holy provided 
you could not get half rates? 

Question No. 9. Could we not be saved by 
living and obeying God, or without the atone- 
ment? 

Answer: Jesus just answered that question 
in my text tonight, so I need not say anything 
more about that. If Jesus can save you without 
the atonement, He could save everybody else 
that way. Why would He have died? 



Prayer. 



O Lord, our heavenly Father, we ask Thy 
Divine blessing to rest upon the message of the 
hour. We pray Thee, O God, that these ques- 
tions and answers may be beneficial to not only 
those who are in the house, but to many who may 
read them after this evening. Thou knowest, Lord, 
how many questions are put into the minds of 
people ; some are honest and some are not ; some 
are questions to which we may have the answer ; 
others are only misleading. But whatever may 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 97 

be the motive, heavenly Father, do Thou bless 
these questions and answers, and help that they 
may show us all the right way that leads to 
heaven. O Father in heaven, do Thou watch 
over those especially who have given their names, 
indicating that their intention is to come on the 
plain and narrow way that leads to heaven. 
Father in heaven, we ask that not one who has 
heard these Avords tonight may attempt to go 
any other way but the right way. Thou knowest 
that death is coming every moment to thousands 
of people. Thou knowest that while we are 
speaking this evening, thousands are passing 
into eternity, and Thou knowest that others are 
coming into the world, and that all who come 
must be born again before they can see the king- 
dom of heaven; therefore we pray Thee that 
Thou wilt make us to know that the Way may 
be made so plain that none on earth can misun- 
derstand. We do thank Thee that there is a way 
to heaven, and that that Way is Jesus Christ 
crucified. We pray Thee that Thou wilt help 
us to accept that Way, and be faithful until 
death, that at last we all may receive the 
crown of eternal life. And now, while we are 
on this narrow Way, help us in our hearts to 
pray the prayer that our Savior taught us : 

Our Father, who art in heaven: hallowed be 
Thy name: Thy kingdom come: Thy will be 
done on earth, as it is in heaven: Give us this 
day our daily bread: And forgive us our tres- 
passes as we forgive those who trespass against 

7 



98 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

us : Lead us, not into temptation, but deliver us 
from evil : For Thine is the kingdom, and the 
power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen. 



PRAYER KNOWS NO OTHER WAY. 
john 14:4-6. 

And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know. 
Thomas said unto Him, Lord, we know not whither Thou 
goest; and how can we know the way? Jesus saith unto 
him, I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life: no man 
cometh unto the Father but by Me. 



Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy Truth: 
Thy Word is Truth. Amen. 



Dear Christian Friends: 

Our object will be in these lectures ou Thurs- 
day evenings to show you clearly from evening 
to evening that there is absolutely no other way 
to reach heaven, to come home to the Father, 
than through His only Son, Jesus Christ. I 
have already shown you that the Bible knows 
no other way; that the law of God knows no 
other way; that faith knows no other way, and 
now this evening I shall show you that even 

PRAYER KNOWS NO OTHER WAY. 

The first thing to do when you come into a 
new country is to ask, what the laws of that 
country are, in order that you may be a good 
citizen. If you obey those laws you will be de- 

(99) 



100 THE WAY MADE PLAIN - 

clared a good citizen; if you disobey them, the 
same laws that were put there for your protec- 
tion will drive you behind the walls. The Ten 
Commandments were given to us to show us the 
way to heaven; for in as much as man fell into 
sin, that same perfect law condemned man and 
drove him to the Lord Jesus Christ as the only 
Way to be saved. Faith shows clearly that unless 
vou believe in the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, 
vou have no faith at all in the true and living 
God. Just the moment that you have a true 
and living faith in God, you are moved by that 
faith to commune with God, and that leads us 
to the subject of prayer. 

I In everv nation upon earth people call 
upon some kind of a god, but only the Christian 
comes to the Father, for without Jesus there is 
no wav to Him. Prayer, we are told, is the con- 
versation of the heart with God, spoken or un- 
expressed. We might say again, that prayei r is 
a talk with God, thanking Him for what He has 
Siven us, and asking Him for what we need. 
A-ain, we might say that prayer is the voice 
of" the new child born in faith, crying to its 
heavenly Father. 

1 With regard to prayer in general, let me 
say that prayer as defined, knows no way to the 
Father except through Jesus. Those people who 
pray without the knowledge of Jesus simply call 
upon a higher being and never know whethei 
STy get an answer or not, and Jesus clearly 
teaches us that they have not because they ask 
not, and because they do not come in His name 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 101 

to the Father. Whatsoever therefore ye shall 
ask the Father in My name, He shall hear you 
and ye shall receive. 

2. Not only is it true that prayer knows no 
other way except through Jesus Christ, by defi- 
nition, but it is just as true that the very motive 
of prayer knows no other way. Why should any 
man pray? Because he needs help. Ke is a 
poor helpless being, with an immortal soul that 
cries to the eternal God. What are you going 
to do in time of trouble if you do not call upon 
God? 

Not only should we pray because we need 
help, but because God has given us the com- 
mand. It is just as much a command to 
pray to God as it is not to steal, or not 
to kill, or to honor father and mother. You 
have no right therefore, as an obedient citizen 
on earth, to go along without prayer. You are 
violating a Divine command. 

God has given us some wonderful promises. 
"Call upon Me in the day of trouble and I will 
deliver thee and thou shalt glorify Me." "What- 
soever ye shall ask the Father in My name, I 
will do it." "Where two or three are gathered 
together in My name, I will be in the midst of 
them." These promises of God are made by the 
Lord Jesus Christ, and through Him only can 
we get the promise; and consequently the motive 
of prayer already shows us that there is no other 
May to the Father. 

3. This is not only true with regard to the 



102 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

motive, but it is also true with regard to God 
whom we address. To whom shall we pray? 
Shall we simply speak to the Supreme Architect 
of the universe? Shall we simply call upon God 
to help us? We may call upon the true and liv- 
ing God and simply call Him Lord, or God, and 
the prayer is acceptable, but on the other hand, 
it is possible to call upon the name, God, and 
God never hears it. It is possible to use names 
that refuse to accept Jesus Christ, and it is no 
prayer at all. When a Jew prays to God he does 
not pray to the same being that you and I pray 
to when we say God. Many individuals call 
upon the Great Architect of the universe. They 
do not mean the God we do. Consequently the 
Christian never can pray unless he addresses 
his prayer either in thought or in word to the 
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, to the only true 
and living God. There is no other. "I am the 
Lord ; that is My name, and My glory will I not 
give to another, neither My praise to graven 
images." "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy 
God and Him only shalt thou serve." If any one 
thing is plainly taught throughout the Word of 
God it is that prayer is to be directed to the true 
and living God, Father,. Son, and Holy Ghost. 
4. How are you going to pray in the name 
of Jesus Christ if you do not go the only way 
to the Father? There is no other way. And we 
learn the same lesson when we remember for 
what we are to pray. We are not only to pray 
for temporal gifts, but also for spiritual gifts. 
"Be careful for nothing; but in everything by 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 103 

prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let 
your requests be made known unto God." Phil. 
4 :6. Pray for everything. But we are to make 
a difference between things that are spiritual 
and things that are temporal. When you pray 
for spiritual gifts you must expect the positive 
answer. When you ask for temporal gifts, some- 
thing that pertains only to the body and to this 
life, you must remember that sometimes we ask 
ignorantly, and consequently must say, Lord, 
if it is Thy will. John writes: (I John 5:14) 
And this is the confidence that we have in Him, 
that, if we ask anything according to His will, 
He heareth us. And again, Jesus said: O My 
Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from 
Me ; nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt. 
Again it is said : Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou canst 
make me clean. The will of God must therefore 
be consulted with regard to temporal matters. 
Also with regard to spiritual. With regard 
to spiritual matters His will is made known 
throughout the Bible. Every man knows when 
he asks for forgiveness of sin in the name of 
Jesus Christ, that he gets forgiveness. That is 
the will of God. When he comes to ask for 
health, or strength, or for any other temporal 
gift, he must always say, Lord, if it be Thy will. 
When I am sick I do not always know that I am 
to get well; it may be my last sickness; it may 
be God's intention that this last sickness should 
take me away from this world. When God said, 
"Call upon Me in the day of trouble and I will 
deliver thee and thou shalt glorify Me," He 



104 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

makes that promise; but remember, when you 
are sick there are three ways of deliverance. He 
can take the sickness entirely away from you. 
That is one way. He can help you to bear your 
sickness. That is another way. In the third 
place, He can take your soul to heaven, and 
totally deliver you; and that is the very best 
way. When you pray for a temporal gift, I re- 
peat it, you must say, "Lord, if it be Thy will." 
But how are we going to know that will? Jesus 
Christ made known to us the will of the Father ; 
He made known to us the will of our God, and 
without Him there is no way, even in prayer, to 
come home to our Father. 

5. This is not only true in regard to what 
we shall pray for; it is just as true with regard 
to whom we shall pray for. Paul says in 1 Tim. 
2:1, 2: "I exhort therefore, that, first of all, 
supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving 
of thanks be made for all men; for kings, and 
for all that are in authority; that we may lead 
a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and 
honesty." This is only one passage of many 
which clearly teaches us that if we are Chris- 
tians we must pray for all people. Where do 
you learn that? Can you learn that in any hea- 
then land? No. There isn't a heathen land on 
earth where men are not taught to have revenge 
on their enemies. Where will you learn to pray 
for all people, for friends and for foes? There 
is only one place in all the world that you can 
learn to pray for the man that slaps you in the 
face; there is only one place in all the world 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 105 

that you can learn to actually love an enemy, 
and you can never learn that until you stay at 
that place a long time. That place is Calvary's 
hill. Not until you have been accustomed to sit 
down at the feet of Jesus and hear Him, time 
and again, praying, "Father, forgive them, for 
they know not what they do,'-' can you learn to 
pray for your enemies. Now pray tell me, how 
are you going to learn to pray for your enemies 
if you do not learn it of Jesus Christ? And 
Jesus Christ is the only Way that leads to hea- 
ven. Prayer clearly teaches this. 

6. This is not only true with regard to the 
people for whom we should pray, but it is just 
as true with regard to the time. When shall we 
pray? I Avould answer in the first place, with- 
out ceasing, particularly also at stated times. 
"Pray without ceasing," says the apostle. If 
you want a living example of praying without 
ceasing, you have got to find Jesus Christ. 
Jesus Christ said, "My house is a house of 
prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves." 
Jesus was walking in prayer ; He was talking in 
prayer. He was living in prayer. His whole 
life on earth was a prayer. He prayed from the 
time He came into the world until He passed 
out, and with His very last breath He prayed: 
Father, into Thy hands I commend My Spirit. It 
was the Way to the Father that taught us all 
how to live. And the more we study this ques- 
tion, the more we see how much we have already 
missed by living a prayerless life. I do not know 
how many people I have sitting before me to- 



106 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

night who are accustomed to pray throughout 
all their labors. I may have some here who do 
not pray at all. I may have some here who pray 
at stated times only. I may have some who pray 
only once a day ; but I do hope I have some sit- 
ting before me tonight who cannot think twenty 
minutes without prayer; who associate every- 
thing that they do with a communion with God. 
There are people who live in the atmosphere of 
prayer, whose very delight is to be aloDe as 
often as possible that they may pray without 
disturbance. People who do that learn this, that 
there is only one Way, and that is learned of 
Him who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, 
for no man cometh io the Father but by Him. 
7. The same istrue with regard to the place 
of prayer. Where shall we pray? Everywhere; 
but particularly also in our closets and at 
church. 1 Tim. 2 :8. I will therefore that men 
pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands, without 
wrath and doubting. Matt. 6 :6. "But thou, when 
thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when 
thou hast shut thy door, pray to Thy Father 
which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth 
in secret shall reward thee openly." Ps. 26:12. 
"In the congregations will I bless the Lord." 
From such passages we find out that the place 
to pray is where you are. Everywhere, lift up 
holy hands to God in prayer. But remember 
that there is a closet in the home for you to 
pray. There is a family that needs prayer. Con- 
duct your family worship. Read the Word of 
God. * Collect your family together and confess 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 107 

the Apostle^' Creed. Let no infidelity grow up 
in your home. Plant the truth into all hearts 
every morning, and there lift up your voice in 
praise as well as in prayer to the heavenly 
Father. And then remember when you have 
prayed in the church and in the family, that you 
ought to have one place in the world where you 
can pray all alone. The more I study this pass- 
age, the more I travel over the world, the more 
I can see the very Providence of God in arrang- 
ing these little closets for us to pray. No differ- 
ence whom you visit, before the night is over 
they will show you to a room where you can be 
alone and have a closet of prayer. No differ- 
ence where you travel, there is a little place 
somewhere — it may not be a place of honor, 
but God is willing to meet you wherever there 
are four walls and a door — and there you can 
pray all alone to your heavenly Father. How do 
you learn this way? Only through Him who 
went out on the mountains alone; only through 
Him who said to his disciples: Stay here and 
I will go away as far as men can throw a stone, 
and be alone and lift up My heart to My heaven- 
ly Father. Jesus Christ teaches us where to 
pray, alone, alone to the Father. 

8. The only way, says Jesus, to come home, 
is in the name of Himself. Matt. 21 :22 : "And 
all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, 
believing, ye shall receive." John 16:23. "Ver- 
ily, verily, I say unto yon, Whatsoever ye shall 
ask the Father in My name, He will give it you." 
Why does the Lord Jesus make so much out of 



108 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

His own name? Not because He wants to honor 
Himself, but because He wants to tell you the 
truth. Remember the text : I am the Way, the 
Truth, and the Life, and no man cometh to the 
Father but by Me. Without Jesus Christ there 
is no eternal life. Without Jesus Christ there is 
no truth. Without Jesus Christ there is no way 
to heaven. If this is a fact, how can Jesus Christ 
permit you and me to be in ignorance on this 
question? You must have the name, and just 
because the name of God shall not be taken in 
vain, for that very reason it is such a holy name, 
and enables us to come home to the Father. 
Notice the difference in the use of the name. 
Here is a man who has got one thousand dollars 
in the bank; he writes me a check; puts his 
name to it. I take the check, go to the bank, lay 
it down, having endorsed it. The cashier gives 
me the money. There isn't a word said about it. 
What drew the money? The name of the de- 
positor. But, on the other hand, suppose I pick 
up that check, instead of the owner, and I write 
his name thereon. I go to the bank, draw the 
money possibly, possibly not. Two hours after- 
wards the policeman comes, takes hold of me, 
leads me into the jail. I am taken before the 
court, condemned to prison. In the one case the 
name put me behind the walls. In the other 
the name brought me the money. What is the 
difference? In the one case I made the right 
use of that name; in the other I abused the name. 
The abuse of a man's name will put you into the 
penitentiary. As I said before, some people will 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 109 

take God's name in vain and think it amounts 
to nothing. I tell you that unless you repent, 
it will put you into hell. That is what it means. 
But take the name of God and use it as He wants 
it used, and you can come home to the Father. 
This is the only Way — the only Way, and all 
your prayers without the name of Jesus do not 
rise above your heads. They are blasphemy in 
the sight of God. 

II. Jesus saith unto him : I am the Way, the 
Truth, and the Life: no man cometh unto the 
Father but by Me. Who is this Jesus that says 
this? It is the same One who taught us what 
we usually call the Lord's Prayer — the most 
beautiful prayer that was ever offered. A 
prayer not for the Lord to pray, for He never 
prayed it. Did it ever occur to you that the 
Lord Jesus Christ could not pray His own 
prayer? How could He who never sinned, pray : 
Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those 
who trespass against us? The 17th chapter of 
John is the Lord's Prayer for Himself to pray. 
The Lord's Prayer in the sermon on the mount 
is the Lord's Prayer for you and me to pray ; but 
this Lord's Prayer upon the mountain shows us 
clearly that there is no other Way to the Father. 

1. There is no other way because He is the 
only Author. No man on earth could ever have 
formulated the Lord's Prayer. Suppose for a 
single moment that there were no Lord's Prayer 
in the Bible, and you were to ask all the theolo- 
gians in the world to write a model prayer; in ten 
thousand times ten thousand years they never 



110 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

could have modeled the Lord's Prayer. No man 
on earth without the teaching of Jesus Christ 
would ever have put six prayers into the one for 
the soul, and only one for the body. No man on 
earth in seven little short prayers of only a few 
words each, could have condensed everything 
that a man could ask for, for his body and soul, 
in ten thousand years. Did it ever occur to you 
that there never has been a thing asked for from 
the days of Christ until this evening that does 
not lie in the Lord's Prayer? Jesus, therefore, 
the Author of the Lord's Prayer, Himself, by 
being the Author, shows us that the only way to 
the Father is through Him. 

2. This is just as true when you examine 
any part of this Lord's Prayer. Take the Intro- 
duction: Oar Father, who art in heaven. How 
could God be a Father if He had no Son, and no 
child? How could God be a Father if Jesus 
Christ were not His Son? Has it occurred to 
you that if Jesus Christ were not the Son of 
God, that God could not possibly be a Father? 
God is not your Father, nor mine, because He 
created us. If so, then He is the Father of the 
serpent; then He is the devil's Father. God 
created the devil as well as He created you. He 
created the devil an angel, and you never heard 
of the angels calling Him Father, unless they 
refer to the Son. Just because God has a Son, 
Jesus Christ, for that very reason He calls you 
His child, when you accept Jesus; and having 
accepted the only Son of God as your Father, 
then Christ's Father becomes yours. Therefore 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. Ill 

I say again, the very Introduction of the Lord's 
Prayer teaches us clearly that we must pray in 
the name of Jesus. A man once found fault with 
my exposition of this prayer, and he said : "You 
say there is no prayer worth anything without 
the name of Jesus, and yet in the Lord's Prayer 
you do not find the name of Jesus." That might 
look to some people like an argument, but the 
poor man failed to notice the meaning of the 
word "Father." Suppose I bring a man up .on 
this platform and tell you he is a man twenty- 
one years of age, a married man. Do you tell 
me that man is a father? He is not a father 
until some child is his child. And in that sense 
God the Father never would have been given 
that name, nor would you have a right to address 
Him with that title, were it not for His Son, 
Jesus Christ. 

3. Not only is it true that the Introduction 
shows He is the only Way ; it is just as true that 
the First Petition shows this. Look at the first 
petition : Hallowed by Thy name. Dr. Luther's 
explanation says this: "God's name is indeed 
holy in itself, but we pray in this petition that 
it may be holy among us." Then puts the ques- 
tion: "How is this done?" "When the Word 
of God is taught in its truth and purity, and we 
as the children of God also lead a holy life ac- 
cording to it." How are you going to teach this 
Word of God in its truth and purity and leave 
Jesus Christ out? How can you lead a holy 
life and not walk in the footsteps of Jesus 
Christ? The very first petition shows us there- 



112 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

fore that there is do other way to the Father 
except through Jesus Christ, your Savior and 
mine. 

4. This is just as true of the Second Peti- 
tion : Thy kingdom come. Wherever there is a 
kingdom, there is a king. Who is the King of 
glory? says the Psalmist. The Lord, He is the 
King of glory. How can you pray, Thy king- 
dom come, and leave your King out? And who 
is the only heir of the Father except Jesus 
Christ, into whose hands pass all the kingdoms 
of the world? Do you not see therefore, Jesus 
Christ is the only way that leads to heaven, and 
that no man cometh to the Father but by Him? 

5. The same is true of every other petition. 
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. 
Who does the will of God in heaven? The holy 
angels. Who are the holy angels? They are 
the ones who sang over the plains of Bethlehem ; 
Glory to God in the highest; peace on earth; 
good-will toward men! Why did they sing? 
Because over there is the birth of the King — 
the only way that leads to heaven ! Why is there 
an angel in Gethsemane?. Because he came to 
strengthen Him who is the Way, the Truth, and 
the Life, and no man cometh unto the Father 
but by Him. Why that flight of angels on Easter 
morning rolling the rock away from the sepul- 
cher? Because the King of heaven — the only 
Way — is risen now ! The Lord God, our Savior 
is living, never to die again! Those angels up 
there obey, and our prayer is that those angels 
of God that ascend and descend on the Son of 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 113 

man, on the only Way that leads to heaven, may 
be our model here on earth. Our prayer there- 
fore ought to be: Father in heaven, as Thine 
angels up there always go at Thy command, 
make us more obedient here on earth; help us 
to study Thy commandments and to know Thy 
will, and do as Thou wouldst have us do. Help 
us. We ask this by the only Way that leads to 
heaven. 

6. This is just as true with regard to the 
Fourth Petition, the only petition for the body 
and temporal gifts : Give us this day our daily 
bread. Some one may say, What has that prayer 
got to do with Jesus Christ? If we are praying 
simply for daily bread, it makes no difference 
whether we have a way to heaven or not. But, 
my friends, stop a moment and meditate. If 
there were no way to heaven, who would be sat- 
isfied with praying only for daily bread? If 
there were no way to heaven, I would want to 
pray for enough bread for the next century. 
The very fact that we pray for daily bread is the 
teaching of Him who is the Way, showing us 
that we should not be burdened here on earth 
by having nothing, or by having too much. The 
Wise man said in Prov. 30:7-9, what ought to 
be your prayer and mine every day: "Two 
things have I required of Thee; deny me them 
not before I die : Remove far from me vanity and 
lies: Give me neither poverty nor riches." 
How many of you have ever prayed God not to 
let you get rich? I would just like to see the 



114 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

hands of those that ever prayed God to keep 
thein poor. I am not looking for any. "Feed 
me with food convenient for me; lest I be full 
and deny Thee, and say, Who is the Lord? or 
lest I be poor and steal, and take the name of 
my God in vain." So the very fourth petition, 
the one that we would suppose least of all to 
have anything to do with the only Way, comes 
from Jesus Christ and shows us that the only 
true prayer can be learned of Him concerning 
temporal gifts. 

7. This is especially true again with regard 
to the Fifth Petition : And forgive us our tres- 
passes as we forgive those who trespass against 
us. Lord God, forgive us our sins, as we for- 
give those who sin against us; or, Forgive us 
our debts as we forgive our debtors. In other 
words, heavenly Father, there is One on the 
cross of Calvary that prayed for His enemies, 
and He taught us to pray for our enemies, and 
He is the only One that ever did teach us how to 
pray that prayer correctly. Therefore, Father 
in heaven, we do thank Thee for the only Way, 
the Truth, and the Life, Jesus Christ, and by 
Him we expect to come to Thee, O Father. 

S. Look at the Sixth Petition : And lead us, 
not into temptation. How many kinds of temp- 
tation are there? Two: Temptation unto good, 
and temptation unto evil. Who tempts us to 
good? Only God. Who tempts us to evil? The 
devil, the world, and our own flesh. Why do 
we want God to lead us, and why do we not 
want Him to let us run into temptation? If 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 115 

there were no Way to heaven, why not be 
tempted; and if there is more than one Way to 
heaven, why not yield to temptation? Did it 
ever occur to you that the very fact that we 
pray God to keep us out of temptation is because 
there is only one Way to heaven, and there is a 
Way? If there were no way at all, we would all 
go and sin. What would be the use to try to 
live a righteous life if we could not be saved any 
way? If there were a thousand ways to go to 
heaven, we would try to escape one and go the 
other; but remember it was Jesus who taught 
us to pray: Lead us, not into temptation. 
Therefore, my friends, if you want the Way 
made plain, and you come to a temptation, do 
not do like the foolish little boy and say, 
"Mother, let me go ; I can go alone." No, go to 
the Father and say : Take hold of me, — lead 
me, not into temptation. 

I heard a very valuable sermon preached by 
the Mayor of this city the other evening. I 
quote him because I want to give every man 
credit for what he does. There in the city prison 
sat a young man, a victim of strong drink. He 
wanted to be released; he wanted to do better. 
I do not very often ask a man to sign a pledge, 
but about a year ago I said to the father of this 
young man, "There is only one way for you ever 
to escape this awful curse. Put your name down 
that by the help of God you will never drink as 
a beverage another drop of liquor." He did, and 
there is not a more sober industrious man in 
the city today than he. This evning I said to 



116 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

this boy : "The only thing for you to do is to 
do as your father did. Put your name down that 
by the help of God, and the prayers of His peo- 
ple, you will never touch nor taste another drop 
of intoxicating liquor as a beverage. Secondly, 
That you put yourself under the pastoral care 
of a certain pastor of this city and take instruc- 
tions in God's Word. And, thirdly, That you 
will try by all the power there is in and around 
you, to be a first class citizen of the United 
States." And on the strength of this he was 
released from prison, and the Mayor said to 
him : "Now then Jack, when you get into trou- 
ble again and you are tempted to do anything 
that is wrong, you go and see Rev. Long first, 
and don't try to get away from him." I 
told him to go to One yet better than Mr. 
Long. "Go to your God right away and say, 
Take hold of me and lead me, not into tempta- 
tion." The trouble with these people is that 
the moment temptation comes, they want to say, 
Now, good men, we want to get away from you; 
God, let me go; I want to try this myself; and 
they go to the devil and destruction. Lead me, 
not into temptation, is the prayer of the man 
that wants the Way made plain, and there is 
only one Way, and that is to walk in the foot- 
steps of Jesus Christ. 

9. If men had written the Lord's Prayer, 
one would have suggested that the last petition 
should be, Deliver us from tobacco; another 
would have suggested delivering us from wine; 
another, delivering us from beer ; a fourth might 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 117 

have said, Deliver us from lustful passions; a 
fifth, from ungodly men, and so on; there would 
have been just as many different ideas as there 
are men; but the Lord's comprehending mind 
put everything together and said, Deliver us 
from evil. That is a prayer that means some- 
thing. That is a prayer that reaches out into 
every avenue of wrong. Right is right and 
wrong is wrong, and there is no middle way be- 
tween right and wrong; and the only way that 
is right is He who said, I am the Way, and the 
Truth, and the Life, and no man cometh unto 
the Father but Me. Oh, let me urge upon you 
all tonight not to lose the way, because it is ab- 
solutely contrary to common sense to lose the 
way when there is only One. When I send a 
man from one street of Mansfield to another, he 
may get lost for the reason we have some of the 
most crooked streets here I ever saw in any city. 
You can start out on a little street and run up 
against a house and cannot go any further. Show 
me a city like I saw some in the west, with one 
big, long street running from one end of the city 
to the other, and no other street, and I will show 
you a city in which it is hard to be lost. Kow 
God has set about to make this way plain. He 
has not selected two ways, nor twenty-five ways 
to heaven; there is only one way. Jesus said, 
I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and no 
man cometh unto the Father but by Me. If I am 
to be saved, I have got to go on the same road 
that Abraham went; the same road that the 
apostles and Dr. Luther went. If you want to 



118 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

be saved, you must go on the way that I go and 
that every Christian goes ; and that Way is Jesus 
Christ and He only. 

The conclusion of the Lord's Prayer says: 
"For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and 
the glory, forever and ever. Amen." Whose is 
the kingdom? The Father says He has given 
all power over to His Son. This is the only Way. 
Whose is the power? Lo, I am with you alway, 
even unto the end of the world. All power is 
given to Me in heaven and on earth, says Jesns 
Christ. Whose is the glory? We have a picture 
in the Book of Revelation of the angels of God 
casting their crowns down at the feet of Him on 
the throne. This is Jesus Christ. He is all the 
glory. 

And so, beloved friends, prayer in general, 
as well as prayer in particular, all point to hea- 
ven by the Way of Jesus Christ. May God bless 
these words to our eternal 2'ood. Amen. 



Question No. 1. Should children obey all 
kinds of parents under all circumstances? 

Ansiver: There is only one exception. The 
apostle said we must obey God rather than man. 
Whenever parents command us to do something 
that is absolutely wrong, it becomes our duty 
first of all to show them that it is forbidden by 
God; and in the second place, to obey God rather 
than father and mother. But remember, there 
is quite a difference between what God actually 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 119 

says is wrong and what children sometimes 
think is wrong. Many children think their 
parents do not know anything, when parents 
have forgotten a thousand times more than 
their children ever knew ; consequently, you have 
got to be very certain parents are wrong before 
you ever disobey. 

Question No. 2. How would you introduce 
family worship into a home where some mock at 
religion? 

Answer: I can realize that this is a question 
of importance, and I can realize that in some 
homes it is a problem as to how to introduce 
family worship. The first trouble is that the 
parents did not start in the right way. If when 
they were married they had had family worship 
the first morning, they would have it today. 
Since they have not had it, they have been rear- 
ing skeptics and mockers in the home, showing, 
secondly, that they have not done their duty 
with regard to teaching the fourth command- 
ment. But now we have the home in the shape 
it is. If mother does want to pray, she has some 
ungodly son that will mock at her, or possibly 
even a father that has no more respect than to 
laugh at children when they pray. What is to 
be done? I think the very first thing to be done 
in a case like that is to teach the family simply 
what good sense is. Leaving all Christianity to 
one side, the man or woman, or the son or daugh- 
ter who will mock at prayer is not fit for society. 
It ought to be shown that such an act is not 
human; it is devilish. The first act therefore, 



120 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

ought to be to teach that family a little sense. 

Secondly, get your Bible down and read the 
first Psalm, showing the difference between a 
Christian and a mocker and scorner, and let 
God talk to that man a little while. 

Thirdly, Just offer a prayer if they do laugh. 
We ought to be able to stand it as Christians, 
to have people mock us. The Savior endured a 
great deal of mockery. Do your duty, no differ- 
ence what the world says. 

I would further suggest, if you have any 
trouble on that line, to call upon your pastor, 
and he will come over and eat a meal with you, 
and he will have family worship, and he will 
show you how to do it. 

Question No. 3. What does it take to con-, 
stitute a good Christian? 

Answer: That is a very good question. I 
hardly know how to answer that in a few words, 
but I would say, to make my answer short, Study 
the ten commandments until you find out your 
sins ; then flee to Christ and ask His forgiveness. 
Put your trust in the true and living God, hav- 
ing faith in Him ; pray daily ; expect an answer 
to your prayers because you pray in the name of 
the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Remember 
His covenant every day that you should rise in 
newness of life as Jesus rose from the grave. Go 
to the Lord's Supper every time you can. Re- 
member, it is the sweetest communion on earth. 
Never miss Divine service unless you are too 
sick to come. Whatever you learn of God, live 
it, and whatever you do, do it to the glory of 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 121 

God. Be faithful until death, and receive the 
crown of eternal life. 

Question No. 4- Can a man help it if he does 
not love his enemy? 

Answer: From the human standpoint, no. 
From a spiritual standpoint, yes. The carnal 
mind is enmity against God. The natural man 
is not only an enemy of God, but an enemy of 
humanity, and it is only natural for the natural 
man to hate his enemy. The spiritual man gets 
the Spirit of Christ. The Spirit of Christ loves 
the enemy, and the more you have of the Spirit 
of Christ, the more you will love your enemy; 
and the only way to be a true Christian is to 
conquer yourself, to be kind to every enemy. It 
was said of a great man in Germany, that if you 
want a favor of him, just go and offend him. 
There you have the other side of the natural life. 
If you want to make a natural man an enemy, 
offend him ; if you want to make a real genuine 
Christian do you a favor, offend him. 

Question No. 5. Did not Dr. Luther make a 
mistake when he put prayer the third chief part 
of his catechism? Should not prayer be the 
first? 

Answer: I answer, no. Did the Lord begin 
the Bible putting prayer first? He gave the law 
first, in order to teach men their sins, in order 
to show them how they must need a Savior; 
then He shows them the Savior. When a man 
has faith, then he begins to pray. He cannot 
pray without faith. How shall they call upon 



122 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

Him of whom they have not heard? How shall 
they call upon Him in whom they do not believe? 
It is a great mistake, therefore, to urge people 
to pray when they haven't any faith. Teach 
them the law first, and by that they will take 
their flight to Christ; having found Him by 
faith, they begin to pray. Consequently the cate- 
chism is rightly arranged. It begins with the 
Ten Commandments; then the Apostles' Creed; 
then Prayer ; then Baptism ; then the Lord's Sup- 
per. First, learn that you are a sinner. Then 
get rid of your sins through faith in Christ. 
Having faith, you pray. You know that your 
prayer is answered because you are adopted by 
Christ in Holy Baptism. By Baptism you are 
born again, and consequently need to be nour- 
ished by the Lord's Supper. So that the five 
chief parts are arranged just exactly right in 
the catechism. 



Prayer. 



O God, our heavenly Father, we thank Thee 
that Thou hast moved Thy people to come to 
Thy temple in this evening hour. And we thank 
Thee that the very message of the evening has 
been on the line of showing us that we can come 
to Thee right now as we are praying to Thee 
through Thy Son, Jesus Christ, and through 
Him only. O Father in heaven, we do thank 
Thee that there is a Way to heaven, and that this 
Way is an eternal W T ay; that this Way is a 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 123 

clear and plain Way; that this Way goes past 
that guide post that stood on Calvary's hill, 
showing us that the only Way to the Father is 
through the Child of Bethlehem, Jesus of Naz- 
areth, who is the King of glory. Now Lord 
our God, we ask Thy blessing upon the message 
this evening, not only because it was heard by 
this congregation, but we pray Thee, heavenly 
Father, that Thou wilt give a special blessing 
to the hands who record this message for the 
benefit of those who may read it outside of this 
church, in other parts of the world, long after 
these tongues of ours are silent. O God, our 
heavenly Father, Thou knowest the wonderful 
blessings that Thou hast in store for us, and how 
poor we are at times spiritually and financially 
because we refuse to ask of Thee. We pray to 
Thee therefore, this night, for gifts for body and 
for soul, giving us all the good things that we 
need; take all evil away from us. Lead us on 
paths that are safe — not safe because there are 
no temptations, but in the midst of temptation 
save us because we are in the hands of Jesus who 
is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and no man 
cometh to the Father but by Him. O Lord help 
ns now to pray the beautiful prayer which Thou 
hast taught us : 

Our Father, who art in heaven : Hallowed be 
Thy name; Thy kingdom come; Thy will be 
done, on earth as it is in heaven; Give us this 
day our daily bread; and forgive us our tres- 
passes as we forgive those who trespass against 



124 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

us; Lead us, not into temptation, but deliver us 
from evil; For Thine is the kingdom, and the 
power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen. 



BAPTISM KNOWS NO OTHER WAY. 
John 14:6. 

Jesus saith unto him, I am the Way, the Truth, and 
the Life : no man cometh unto the Father but by Me. 



Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy Truth: 
Thy Word is Truth. Amen. 



Beloved in Christ: — 

Here is a wonderful statement in the Word 
of God, which many people in this civilized land 
do not believe. There are many people today 
who think that even though a man does not be- 
lieve in Jesus Christ, there is still some way for 
him to reach heaven. Brethren, if there is an- 
other way to reach heaven outside of Jesus 
Christ, the Bible ii 
told us an untruth. 

We maintain throughout all these discourses 
that Jesus is the Way, and the only Way, to 
the Father. We have shown you clearly that 
the Word of God knows no other way. We have 
examined the holy law and found that it would 
only drive a man to despair if he did not go to 
Christ. We have examined the Creed and find 
that every article of the Apostles' Creed depends 
wholly and solely upon faith in Christ. We 

(125) 



126 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

have shown you that prayer in general, as well 
as the Lord's Prayer, knows no other way to 
the Father except through Jesus Christ. The 
Catechism is like a hand with five fingers, the 
whole hand pointing you to the Way to heaven. 
We come tonight to the fourth finger, or Holy 
Baptism. I maintain, then, that except through 
Jesus Christ, 

HOLY BAPTISM KNOWS NO OTHER WAY TO THE 
FATHER. 

I. Christ instituted both the sacraments, 
not only of the Old Testament, but also of the 
New. 

1. In the Old Testament they had two sac- 
raments, the one Circumcision and the other the 
Passover. Each one of those two sacraments 
was instituted by the Lord, and the Lord of the 
Old Testament is the Word of the New Testa- 
ment which became flesh and dwelt among us. 
In other words, it was Jesus Christ who taught 
Abraham the institution of circumcision ; and it 
was Jesus Christ the Word which afterwards 
became flesh that instituted the paschal lamb, 
called the Passover. 

2. Just as we had two sacraments in the 
Old Testament, we have now two in the New, 
and Jesus Christ is the author of them. There 
would be no baptism at all were it not for Jesus 
Christ. There would be no Lord's Supper were 
it not for Jesus Christ. A sacrament is a holy 
rite instituted by Christ Himself, whereby with 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 127 

visible means the treasures of the Gospel are 
offered, given and sealed to us. Therefore Jesus 
being the author of these sacraments clearly 
shows that there is no way known by Baptism 
without Jesus Christ. 

II. Not only is it true that He instituted 
both sacraments, but it is just as true that He 
gave the commandment to baptize. It was this 
Way, the Truth, and the Life, that said: "Go 
ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to 
every creature; and he that believeth and is 
baptized shall be saved; and he that believeth 
not shall be damned." Who was it then that 
gave us the authority to baptize? It was Jesus 
Christ Himself. It was the last command that 
He gave just before He ascended to heaven. 
Now it is appropriate in these few days before 
Ascension that we should remember that this 
was the last great command given by Him who 
said, I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life: 
no man cometh unto the Father but by Me. 
If, then, Jesus Christ Himself is the author of 
that command, do you not clearly see that Bap- 
tism knows no other way to the Father? 

III. It is not only true that Jesus Christ 
gave the command, but it is just as true that 
He gave all we need to know about the form of 
baptism. There is so much said in some churches 
about the form of baptism. You will find that 
some denominations are based wholly and solely 
upon the fact that they think a man must be 
immersed in the name of the Father, Son, 
and Holy Ghost. Others again not only say 



128 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

that you must be immersed, but you must 
be immersed forward, and they build up a 
denomination on that line. Others say you 
must be immersed backwards, and they have 
another denomination. Others again say you 
have got to be immersed three times, while 
others again say only once; and so you see how 
people are divided on things concerning which 
God never said anything. I maintain that Jesus 
Christ said all that we need to know about the 
form of baptism. There is no dispute among 
the churches as to the words to be used. When 
Jesus Christ wanted people baptized in the name 
of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, He said 
so, and we all know that there is no dispute 
on that question. Now if the Lord Jesus Christ 
wanted us baptized just in a certain way with 
water, He would have said so. What does He 
do? He says that Jesus Christ, as the only Way 
to the Father, told us all that we need to know 
about the form. As to the words, it is: In 
the name of the Father, and of the Son, and 
of the Holy Ghost; and the visible means is 
water; and Christ never said how much. And 
whenever we begin to dispute about the forms 
of baptism as to the quantity of water, then we 
are on dangerous ground. Beware that you do 
not say that we must be baptized exactly as 
Jesus was, for you do not know how that was. 
No man on earth knows whether Jesus was 
under the water or not ; no man knows whether 
He was in the Jordan half way or to the edge; 
no man knows just how deep it was there. The 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. ' 129 

only painting we have from the fourth century 
after Christ pictures Him as standing in the 
water, and John the Baptist standing on a rock 
pouring the water on His head. True, that 
picture does not prove anything, and the claim 
that He was under the water because He came 
up out of the water does not prove anything. 
You all understand that when you step into the 
water, whether two inches or two feet deep, you 
have got to come up out of that, and that is what 
Jesus did. Let us be satisfied to have the plain 
way, just exactly what Jesus said, baptize with 
water, in the name of the Father, and of the 
Son, and of the Holy Ghost. You have got all 
that you need to hold to, and all that the Way 
made plain. I know there are some people who 
say unless you are immersed you are not bap- 
tized, but I have tailed your attention before to 
the fact that there were many immersed in the 
Bible that were not baptized. Pharaoh was im- 
mersed in the Red Sea, but he was not baptized. 
The iron ax was immersed in the Jordan, but 
it was not baptized. We know that the swine 
on the hill came down and were immersed, but 
they were not baptized. Let us therefore be 
careful that we do not try to put into the Bible 
what is not there, or take out of the Bible what 
is in there. If, therefore, water has been placed 
upon you, either by immersion, or sprinkling, 
or pouring, in the name of the Father, and of 
the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, consider your- 
self baptized once and forever, and do not make 



130 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

the mistake of being baptized twice. Circum- 
cision was a covenant ; no man was circumcised 
twice. A covenant should never be broken. God 
never breaks His part of the contract, and man 
should not break his. If, therefore, you are bap- 
tized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, 
and of the Holy Ghost, you have a covenant with 
God that He will be to you a Father, and that 
you are now His child, and one baptism is suf- 
ficient, and it means to distrust God if you must 
be baptized again. Jesus Christ is the Way, the 
Truth, and the Life: no man cometh unto the 
Father but by Him. 

IV. It is not only true that He gave all we 
need to know about the form of baptism, but 
He told us whom He wants baptized, 

You know again that some churches will not 
baptize their children. All Christian churches 
will baptize believing adults. There is no ques- 
tion whatever on that. We all believe that just 
as soon as an adult, not having been baptized is 
converted and believes in the Father, Son and 
Holy Ghost, and accepts Jesus Christ as his Re- 
deemer, he is to be baptized in that name. As 
I said before, there is no dispute about that. 
What is not plain? 

To some people it is not plain that the little 
infant should be baptized. The Lutheran Church 
claims that as one of the essential doctrines of 
the Christian Church, that the little children of 
Christian parents should at once be brought to 
the Lord and baptized in the name of the Father, 
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Is that 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 131 

plain? Is that plainly taught in the Word of 
God? If so, where is it taught? 

It is plainly taught in the Word of God, in 
the first place, because God assures us that he 
that believeth and is baptized shall be saved. 
He shows us very clearly that everybody that is 
to be saved can be baptized. If the little 
children are to be saved, what is to hinder them 
from that means of grace by which they are to 
be saved? Didn't the Lord give the command 
to go out into the world and make disciples of 
all nations, baptizing them in the name of the 
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost? 
Now what right has any man on earth to take 
away one-third of the population and say, these 
dare not be baptized? What right have we to 
say that some people can go to heaven without 
baptism and others should be baptized? What 
right have we to say that here is one fit for 
heaven, but not fit for baptism? What right 
have we to say that this little child can be an 
unbeliever and yet can be saved? The Bible 
clearly teaches that he that believeth not shall 
be damned. When it comes to this little infant 
you must either admit that it can or cannot be- 
lieve. If it cannot believe, Christ says it is 
damned, and you know that Jesus does not want 
the little children damned, for He said of such 
as those He blessed, of such is the kingdom of 
heaven. He wants them. If you take the plain 
command of Jesus to make disciples of all na- 
tions, baptizing them, you have at once got in- 
fants to baptize, and you cannot get away from 



132 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

it. Is it not plain that if I should say, Go and 
make disciples of your whole family, that I do 
not want the little infants excluded? 

But again, we are taught in the Word of God 
that unless a human being is born again, he 
cannot see the kingdom of God, nor enter the 
kingdom of heaven. I say human being, because 
the word man means human being and nothing 
else. Except man be born again he cannot see 
the kingdom of God, and except he be born again 
he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. Who 
made that declaration? Where do we find such 
a word? W T e find it in the third chapter of 
John, made by Jesus Christ, who said, I am the 
Way, the Truth, and the Life: no man cometh 
unto the Father but by Me. If, therefore, there 
is anything that is settled and ought to be plain 
to every Christian, it is, first of all, that every 
one must be born again ; and in the second place 
that he must be born again by the Holy Spirit, 
and that the Holy Spirit gives him the new birth 
through the Word and water. Those things are 
so plainly taught, by Jesus Christ that I cannot 
make it plainer. Isn't it plain, therefore, that 
if vou want to come to the Father, you must 
come by the way of Him who is the Way, the 
Truth and the Life? 

It is not only plainly taught by Jesus Christ 
that you must be born again, but it is just as 
plainly taught that if you haven't faith you can- 
not be saved. Heb. 11 :6. Without faith it is 
impossible to please God. Mark 16:16. He that 
believeth not shall be damned. The child has 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 133 

not by nature got faith. We are by nature 
children of wrath. "I was shapen in iniquity, 
and in sin did my mother conceive me." The 
natural man believeth not the things of the 
Spirit of God. Consequently if the child is to 
have faith, God must give that child faith. I 
do not say He cannot give faith to a child in 
some other Avay, but I do say the approved way 
of giving faith to a child is through the means 
of grace. Consequently the Lord Jesus Christ 
said explicitly (Mark 10:14) : Suffer the little 
children to come unto Me, and forbid them not, 
for of such is the kingdom of God. Some men 
quote that verse to prove that every child is born 
fit for heaven whether baptized or not. Jesus 
Christ never said that heaven is made up of chil- 
dren who are not regenerated. Jesus Christ had 
the little children to come unto Him, and He 
blessed them, and of such is the kingdom of hea- 
ven. If the Lord Jesus Christ were right here 
and laid His hand upon your child and blessed it, 
that is all you could give that child in baptism. 
That is what He did with those of whom He said, 
of such is the kingdom of heaven. 

Some one said : I would accept that wholly 
if I could believe that a little child could have 
faith. Are you going to believe Christ or not? 
Matt. 18:6, "But whoso shall offend one of these 
little ones which believe in Me, it were better 
for him that a mill-stone Avere hanged about his 
Deck, and that he were drowned in the depth of 
the sea." I am sure that faith is a gift of God. 
Is it any harder for you to give a gift to a little 



134 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

child than to an old man? Is it any harder 
to make a good boy out of a little child than it 
is out of a hardened sinner? If even you can 
give a gift as easily to an infant as to an old 
man, why cannot God give faith to a little child 
just as well as He can to an old and hardened 
sinner? If there is any difference, it is harder 
to give faith to a hardened sinner than to an 
innocent little babe. But, some one says, the 
little babe cannot do anything itself. Nor can 
an old, hardened sinner. Is there any man on 
earth that can give himself faith? Is there any 
man on earth that can plant faith in his own 
heart? It is the gift of God, and being the gift 
of God, I claim it can be given just as easily to 
a little infant as to an older person. 

I have already told you that the Lord who 
instituted Holy Baptism, instituted circumcis- 
ion, and He laid down the plain command, first 
in the seventeenth chapter of Genesis, that the 
little child, eight days old, shall be circumcised 
and brought into the house of God; and we 
know that Christ Himself when eight days old 
was circumcised and called Jesus, because he 
should save the people from their sins. If Jesus 
Christ, at the age of eight days, Himself was 
brought into the church of God by holy circum- 
cision, do you suppose, in as much as baptism 
takes the place of circumcision in the New Tes 
tament, that therefore we must be older? Do 
you suppose that the old church of God was so 
narrow that now we have got to become nar- 
rower yet? Or should we in the New Testament 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 135 

age become broad enough to accept the little 
children as they were accepted in the Old Tes- 
tament? So you see, if we remember that there 
is only one church, and that that one church 
rests upon Jesus Christ in the Old Testament 
as well as in the New, you will clearly see He 
wants the little infants brought to Him as He 
did of old. 

Then let us not forget that in the Bible we 
find mention of five whole families that were 
baptized. If Lydia and her whole household, 
aud the jailer and his whole household, and 
others whom we might mention, were baptized, 
what right have you to say that the little chil- 
dren were not baptized? And even if there were 
not a single example given in the Bible of infant 
baptism, that would not change the doctrine one 
bit. The fact that there is no mention made of 
women going to the Lord's Supper does not ex- 
clude them from that communion. The fact 
that no mention is made of the Indian being con- 
verted to Christianity does not exclude that race. 
The command that covers all nations includes 
women and little infants, and that ought to set- 
tle it for all of us. Oh, how plain the way is 
concerning who is to be baptized. 

V. Not only did Jesus Christ tell us exactly 
whom He wants baptized, but He is the One 
that gave us the promise. Why does anybody 
want to be baptized? Because we find a won- 
derful promise in the Bible, and that promise 
is, He that believeth and is baptized shall be 
saved. Don't you want that promise? Should 



136 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 



promise not only for ourselves, but for our chil- 
dren? Isn't there more comfort in standing 
beside the corpse of the little one taken out of 
your family when you know you have had the 
child baptized and done all that you could, than 
if you have to stop and think, we haven't done 
our duty? Where do we get the promise? Who 
made it? It is not the promise of some infidel. 
It is not the promise of some false teacher. It 
is not the promise of some prophet or apostle; 
but it is the promise of Him who said, I am the 
Way, the Truth, and the Life: no man cometh 
unto the Father but by Me. We have, therefore, 
the promise of Jesus Christ, and this shows 
plainly that Baptism knows no other way. 

VI. Not only is it true that He gave us 
the promise, but it is just as true that He gave 
us the Holy Spirit, through these means of grace. 
In the catechism the question is asked: How 
can water do such great things? Answer: It 
is not water indeed that does them, but the 
Word of God which is in and with the water, 
and faith which trusts such Word of God in the 
water; for without the Word of God the water 
is simply water and no baptism. But with the 
Word of God it is a baptism, that is a gracious 
water of life, and a washing of regeneration in 
the Holy Ghost, as St. Paul says: Titus, 3rd 
chapter : According to His mercy He saved us, 
by the washing of regeneration, and renewing 
of the Holy Ghost, which He shed on us abun- 
dantly through Jesus Christ our Savior; that 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 137 

being justified by His grace, we should be made 
heirs according to the hope of eternal life. This 
is a faithful saying. Notice a few phrases in that 
third chapter of Titus. "He saved us by the 
washing of regeneration." Why does Paul call 
it a washing? Because water in baptism is a 
washing. Why does he call it a washing of re- 
generation? Because Jesus Christ said, Except 
a man be born of water and the Spirit, he can- 
not enter the kingdom of heaven. You see very 
clearly that the Apostle Paul teaches just what 
Jesus did to Meodemus, there must be a new 
birth. The new birth comes by water and the 
Spirit. And then, when you are born again, by 
water and the Spirit, you receive the Holy Ghost, 
and the Holy Ghost comes to us abundantly 
through Jesus Christ the Savior, who said: I 
am the Way, the Truth, and the Life: no man 
cometh unto the Father but by Me. 

Then, my friends, if you want the Holy 
Spirit, you must obey the voice of Him who said, 
Go and be baptized in the name of the Father, 
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. 

And you will understand that the apostle 
Peter preached just that kind of doctrine on the 
day of Pentecost. He said, Arise and be bap- 
tized, and wash away thy sins, and ye shall re- 
ceive the gift of the Holy Ghost ; and this promise 
is to you and your children. Doesn't that sound 
a good deal like the old Augsburg Confession? 
Doesn't it sound a good deal like Luther's 
Catechism? Wash away thy sins, and ye shall 



138 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

receive the gift of the Holy Ghost; and this 
promise is to you and to your children. 

VII. Not only is it true that He gives us 
the Holy Spirit through the means of grace, 
but it is also true that He shows us by His 
death and resurrection what baptism signifies. 
The question arises, What does baptism with 
water signify? It signifies that the old Adam 
in us by daily contrition and repentance should 
be drowned and die, with all sins and evil lusts, 
and that a new man daily come forth and 
arise who shall live in righteousness and purity 
before God forever. Where is this written? 
Romans 6: "We are buried with Christ by 
baptism into death: that like as Christ was 
raised up from the dead by the glory of the 
Father, even so we also should walk in newness 
of life." Notice where Jesus Christ was buried 
— not in the river Jordan but in His grave. And 
notice well that He arose according to these 
words, not from the Jordan, but from His death. 
Notice, too, that when you are baptized you are 
buried with Him, not in the water, but you are 
buried with Him into His death, that like as He 
rose — not from the water — but as He rose 
from the dead, by the glory of the Father, even 
so we also shall walk in newness of life. So 
when we ask the question tonight, What does 
baptism signify? It signifies that you and I 
ought to remember every day of our lives that 
as baptized children of God, who threw His 
arm of mercy around us and said, Now you are 
My child, and being My child, remember every 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 139 

day that I lay in the sepulcher because I had to 
redeem you, and I arose from the dead, and 
just as I arose from the dead you ought to re- 
member that you should rise every day in new- 
ness of life, trying to live nearer and nearer 
to Me and walk in My way, and then I 
will follow you and I will be a Father to you, 
and I will go with you wherever you go, and will 
bring you home. "For the mountains shall de- 
part," says He, "and the hills be removed; but 
My kindness shall not depart from thee, neither 
shall the covenant of My peace be removed, 
saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee." 

What is the difference between a baptized 
person and one who is not baptized? The 
one who is not baptized is like a stranger in 
the home. He runs away and you let him run. 
But he that is baptized is like a child that runs 
away from home. Many a one that has been 
baptized has tried to get away from the Heavenly 
Father, but you remember how He threw His 
arms of mercy around you ; in Holy Baptism He 
adopted you, and He followed you when you 
went to and fro, until he found you and said 
to your conscience and soul: I love you. The 
mountains may depart, but I will not. The 
mountains may fall but I will not leave you. I 
will bring you home again. "My sheep hear My 
voice, and I know them, and they follow Me, 
and I give to them eternal life." It is a glorious 
thing to be a baptized child of God, to have the 
covenant, and remember that the Father is now 



140 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

our Father, and will throw His arms of mercy 
around us and keep us as His own. 

Is the Way plain? It is plain to me and I 
hope it is plain to you, that he that believeth 
and is baptized shall be saved; and he that be- 
lieveth not shall be damned. 



Question No. 1: Does a child believe in God 
when it is born? 

Answer: I have already answered that when 
I quoted the verse: We are by nature children 
of wrath. There is none that doeth good, no, not 
one. There is nothing plainer in the Bible than 
the fact that we are born of flesh and are flesh, 
and before we have faith we must be born of 
the Spirit. A little child by nature, therefore, 
is not a believer; it only becomes a believer as 
the means of grace are applied to it. 

Question No. 2: If a man seeks the truth, 
but cannot accept Christ, will God condemn 
him? 

Answer : That question is hardly fair. If 
a man seeks the sun and cannot find any light, 
is he to blame? I think he would be. Could it 
be possible that a man could hunt for the sun 
and not find it? Is it possible that a man can 
really search for Christ and cannot believe in 
Him? The question is not fair. Jesus is the 
Truth, and when you search for Him you will 
find Him. 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 141 

Question No. 3: If a man be immersed by 
a Dowie elder who is not an ordained minister, 
would that be acceptable baptism? 

Answer: I would even say that if the devil 
should come here in the form of a man, and 
should baptize you in the name of the Father, 
Son, and Holy Ghost, with water, it would be 
baptism. Nowhere in the Word of God does 
the sacrament depend upon the preacher. That 
would be a terrible doctrine. You might as well 
ask the question, do you get the Lord's Supper 
if I am a hypocrite. Baptism does not depend 
upon the man. I will even go a step further. 
You would be baptized whether you believed at 
all or not. Your baptism does not depend upon 
your faith, but without your faith you would 
get no salutary use of baptism; but the form, 
in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, 
with water, is the baptism, independent of the 
man that is baptized, or independent of the one 
that does the baptizing. Now, if you want the 
blessing you must believe. It would be a very 
dangerous doctrine to make baptism depend 
upon the one that does the baptizing. And you 
all understand, that for instance, if a little child 
were dying in your home tonight, and you go 
and baptize that child in the name of the Father, 
Son, and Holy Ghost, it is just as well baptized 
as if you had a dozen preachers there. The 
baptism does not depend upon the man. And 
yet we are taught in the Word of God to have 
order in all things. It is the duty, therefore, of 
a pastor to do the baptizing, but the exception 



142 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

is that any Christian can do that. 

Question No. J^: Is it not better to let a child 
grow large even before it is baptized? 

Answer: You will find the answer to this 
question out in the cemetery. One-third of the 
stones out there mark the graves of those little 
children that never got large. How are you 
going to baptize them when they are old? How 
do you know that your little child is going to 
get large? And then, suppose it is. Why is it 
better to let a little child be outside the realm 
of God's covenant ten or twelve years than to 
be in that covenant? "Suffer the little children 
to come unto Me, and forbid them not, for of 
such is the kingdom of heaven." Do not wait 
until they get old. 

Question No. 5: Can God give a child faith? 

Answer: I believe I have already answered 
that question. A similar question would be: 
Can He give faith to an old sinner? I would 
say He can more easily give faith to a child than 
to an old sinner. 

Question No. 6: Does not baptism and im- 
mersion mean exactly the same thing? 

Answer: I have already partially answered 
that question. If immersion and baptism are 
exactly the same thing, then the swine on the 
hillside that ran down into the sea, were all 
baptized. Nobody believes that. Then Pharaoh 
and his host were baptized in the Red Sea. There 
is not a single proof in the whole Bible that 
anybody was ever immersed for baptism. 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 143 

Question No. 7: The Bible teaches us that 
unless we are baptized we cannot be saved. If 
that is true, how was the thief on the cross 
saved? 

Answer: In the first place the Bible does 
not teach that; and in the second place, it isn't 
true. Nowhere in the Bible does it say if a man 
is not baptized that he cannot be saved. This 
is what the Bible says: He that believeth and 
is baptized shall be saved; and he that believeth 
not shall be damned; but it does not say that 
he that believeth not and is not baptized shall 
be damned. He that believeth not shall be 
damned. Now, if you believe in Christ you will 
be baptized, and being baptized, you have the 
promise of salvation. If you believe not you will 
be damned, baptized or not baptized. The thief 
on the cross was saved because he had faith in 
Christ and did not despise baptism. We always 
make a difference between not being baptized 
and despising baptism. I believe that if a man 
believed in Christ in the last moment of his life 
and had no chance to be baptized, he is saved; 
but if any man has the opportunity, and refuses 
to be baptized, it clearly shows that he does not 
believe in Christ at all. 



Prayer. 



O God, onr Heavenly Father, we pray Thee 
in this evening hour that Thou wilt make the 



144 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

Way plain to all of us who are searching for 
truth. We ask Thee that Thou wilt Thyself 
teach us to be obedient to what Thou hast taught, 
and to put nothing into Thy Word which Thou 
hast not put there, and to take nothing away 
which Thou hast put there. We know that Thou 
hast plainly taught, O God, that those who be- 
lieve in Thee should be baptized in the name of 
the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and that this 
promise is to them and to their children. Do 
Thou help us, heavenly Father, to not only bring 
our little children to Thee, but to teach this truth 
in order that all little children may be brought 
into the kingdom and remain there throughout 
life. Heavenly Father, we ask Thee tonight, to 
make us thankful to Thee that we have had 
parents who knew what to do with us before we 
knew. We thank Thee from the bottom of our 
hearts that we were laid down in the arms of 
Jesus long before we knew it, in the name of 
the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy 
Ghost, and by that baptism were buried with 
Him into His death; and we thank Thee that 
as He rose from the dead, we also may arise in 
newness of life. Heavenly Father, hear this 
prayer which Thou, Thyself, hast taught us, 
through Thy Son, Jsus Christ: 

Our Father, who art in heaven : hallowed be 
Thy name; Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done 
on earth as it is in heaven : Give us this day our 
daily bread ; and forgive us our trespasses as we 
forgive those who trespass against us; Lead us, 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 145 

not into temptation, but deliver ns from evil; 
For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and 
the glory, forever and ever. Amen. 



JO 



CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION KNOW 
NO OTHER WAY. 

John 14:6. 

Jesus saith unto him, I am the Way, the Truth, and 
the Life : no man cometh unto the Father but by Me. 



Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy Truth: 
Thy Word is Truth. Amen. 



Beloved in Christ : — 

I have one of the most unpopular subjects 
tonight in the whole series. You have heard 
that the whole Word of God knows no other 
way except Jesus Christ to the Father. You 
have also heard in another lecture that the Ten 
Commandments know no other way except to 
drive you to Christ to be saved. The Apostles' 
Creed knows no other way to direct you to 
heaven, except through Jesus Christ. There is 
no other way to come home to the Father by 
prayer except through Jesus Christ. There is 
no other way to be baptized, except in the name 
of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. You must 
come by the only way. Before we come to the 
last subject, the Lord's Supper, the Lutheran 
Church has seen fit to throw another topic into 
her catechism and into the Augsburg Confes- 

(146) 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 147 

sion, tliat unpopular subject, Confession and 
Absolution. There are many so-called Lutheran 
Churches who do not even know what the Augs- 
burg Confession does teach concerning confes- 
sion. I therefore propose to read the short ar- 
ticle of this great "Declaration of Independence" 
contained in the Augsburg Confession: "Con- 
cerning confession they teach, that private ab- 
solution ought to be retained in the churches; 
although an enumeration of all our offenses is 
not necessary in confession. For this is im- 
possible, according to the declaration of the 
Psalmist: 'Who can understand his errors?" " 

Without any further introduction I wish to 
show you tonight that 

CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION (OR THE OFFICE OF 

THE KEYS) KNOW NO OTHER WAY TO THE 

FATHER EXCEPT THROUGH JESUS CHRIST. 

In order to make this plain, and that is what 
we are trying to do, let me show you, 
I. That people have sins, 
II. Sinners' woeful mistakes, 

III. The way to forgiveness made plain. 

I. People have sins. There is no question 
about that. Sin is the transgression of the law, 
but before there can be a transgression of the 
law, there is in every man an inborn sin, called 
original. 

1. All men are born in sin. That which is 
born of flesh is flesh. When Adam and Eve 



148 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

sinned it is said of their first son, he was born 
in the likeness of his father. How else could 
he be born? Did you ever stop to think that 
original sin conies from the father, and that, 
tor that very reason, the Father of Jesus Christ 
could not be a man, though His mother might be 
a. woman? If Jesus Christ had had Joseph for 
His father, as He had Mary for His mother, He 
would have been a sinner; but, begotten of the 
Holy Ghost, He was not begotten of sin. Now, 
dear friends, we all know that the human race 
comes from father and mother, and David ex- 
pressed just what you and I can say when he 
said: "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and 
in sin did my mother conceive me." The apostle 
wrote the truth when he said: We are by na- 
ture the children of wrath. There is none good, 
said Jesus, no, not one. How can you go down 
to a muddy river and dip out clear water; or 
how can you go to a clear stream and dip out 
muddy water? That which is of the Clearfork 
is Clearfork water; that which comes from the 
spring is spring water. That which is born of 
sinful flesh is sinful flesh; and the people have 
sins because they are born from sinners. That 
must be plain to every one. 

2. There is another thing that must be plain 
to every one, and that is that some sinners are 
born with greater sins than others. No child 
can help it that it is born black, but some are 
born black because their parents are black, and 
so there are some children who are born with 
a curse resting upon them. The poor chil- 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 149 

dren cannot help it, but it is a fact, never- 
theless. The little black child cannot help that 
it is black, but it is black because father and 
mother are black. And when there are parents 
who know God's holy law when He said, "I the 
Lord Thy God am a jealous God, visiting the 
iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto 
the third and fourth generation of them that 
hate Me," they ought to know that if parents 
do not live as they ought to, that the children 
must suffer. It does not take a very intelligent 
man to notice some children born into the world 
with the brand upon their foreheads: "Not 
wanted!" It does not take a very intelligent 
man to notice that some children are born with 
disease in their bodies that will be a detriment 
to them until they go to their graves. It is 
not hard to discover what a woeful battle some 
young people have to fight because of the fact 
that they had an ungodly grandfather, or an 
ungodly father, or an ungodly grandmother, or 
an ungodly great-grandmother or great-grand- 
father. When we look over the world we not 
only have the great fact that people have sins 
because they are born in sin, but we have the 
great truth that some have got a greater battle 
before them because they are born with greater 
sins than others. 

3. And then let us not forget that sin be- 
gets sin. When David committed his first sin, 
he did not stop at that. He tried to cover over 
his adultery with murder, and if God in His 
mercy had not sent Nathan to him to say, "Thou 



150 THE WAT MADE PLAIN. 

art the man!" there is no telling but what his 
wholearmy would have died because he was there 
multiplying those sins. When you commit one 
sin, if you do not hurry and repent you will 
commit another; and to cover those two, you 
will tell two more lies, or commit two other 
sins; and to cover up the four, you will commit 
eight others; and to cover up the eight, you will 
commit sixteen others. Sin begets sin. And 
when we stop to think how many people there 
are who have never tried to get forgiveness, 
who are going right on, year after year, sowing 
damnation on top of damnation, Oh, what a 
harvest that will be! 

4. Now God hates sin, and He loves the 
sinner, and in order to bring that sinner to re- 
pentance, He sent the Holy Spirit, through the 
Word of God, to enlighten him, and as he be- 
comes enlightened more and more, he feels his 
sins. There is a great deal said nowadays about 
people feeling that they were born again, or feel- 
ing that they are converted. T want to tell you 
right here, no Christian on earth ever felt he 
was converted, or ever felt he was regenerated. 
You may think you did. You may be like that 
poor old man at Columbus who at one excitable 
meeting went through a wonderful transforma- 
tion, and told the world how, on a certain night, 
at a certain hour, he had a wonderful expe- 
rience; he was converted, regenerated. The same 
tiling occurred the next winter when they held 
the next revival meetings, and they converted 
him as often as the winter came. He felt his 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 151 

conversion. As he grew older that animal feel- 
ing left him and he could no longer feel his con- 
version, and went out and hanged himself one 
night. That man did not lose his religion. He 
never had any. And that is the way with hun- 
dreds and thousands of people talking about 
feeling their conversion and regeneration. I will 
show you later on how you know you are saved; 
but there is one thing you can feel, and God 
wants you to feel it; He wants you to feel your 
sins. He wants you to be convicted of your sins. 
He sent you the Holy Spirit to enlighten you 
and to show you that such a course of plung- 
ing on deeper and deeper into a life of sin 
means a hell, and if there wasn't one, God would 
have to make one for you. I am trying to make 
the way plain to you. You have got sins. You 
are born in them. Some of you have got more 
to contend with than others. All the sins you 
have ever had, if not forgiven, are begetting sin 
after sin, and the Holy Ghost pleads through 
His word to make you feel your sins. 

II. What is the second step? Sinners' woe- 
ful mistakes. Let me call your attention to 
some of the mistakes sinners make when they 
feel their sins. 

1. Some try to hide their sins. I think that 
is the natural course of the average man. He 
does wrong; he knows it; and he says, I am go- 
ing to keep that all to myself; I will see to it 
that nobody in the world ever finds it out. And 
some days he thinks he has got his sin covered, 
and some days he thinks he has not. He is the 



152 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

most miserable creature on earth. He has made 
a woeful mistake. David tried that for quite a 
while. Afterwards he repented, and then sat 
down and wrote a poem in order that the world 
might read it, thousands of years after he was 
buried, that they might not make the same mis- 
take that he did. In Psalms 32 :3 Ave find this : 
"When I kept silence, my bones waxed old 
through my roaring all the day long." Just as 
long as he tried to keep that to himself, his very 
bones waxed old, and there was a roaring in his 
conscience all day long. The wisest man that 
wrote before the days of Christ said, in Prov. 
28:13: "He that covereth his sins shall not 
prosper." I know there is not a man in this 
house tonight that does not want to prosper, but 
how can you possibly prosper when you are 
trying to cover up your sins? You might just 
as well try to hide your home with a glass house 
as to try to hide your sins from the all penetrat- 
ing eye of God. How can any man prosper as 
long as he does not confess his sins openly to 
his God and to his Maker? Therefore, let me 
again warn you that you are making a woeful 
mistake just as long as you are trying to keep 
your sin to yourself. 

2. And then another mistake, very closely 
allied to this one, is to make no confession. Some 
people think they will just settle this matter 
with God, and God only. They know they have 
done a wrong, and they positively know that if 
that wrong would get out that it would be just 
terrible; but, the man argues, I will get down 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 153 

on my knees and I will ask God's forgiveness, 
in the name of Jesus Christ, and I will never 
tell anybody. Then he gets up and thinks, now 
I have got it settled ; now I am happy. But he 
starts out in life and that old sin of his comes 
up again. He has no peace. His conscience 
gives him no rest. What is the trouble? My 
friends, God not only demands of a sinner that 
he confess his sins to God, but he demands that 
that sin must be confessed to some man, some 
place, somewhere, and you never can have peace 
until you do that. You may think that is not 
true. Listen to God's Word : "He that covereth 
his sins shall not prosper; but whoso confesseth 
and forsaketh them shall have mercy." Let 
me read those words of John again that we 
read a few moments ago: "If we confess our 
sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our 
sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 
If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him 
a liar, and His Word is not in us." How can 
you make God a liar? It is by talking to men 
and keeping back from men these great truths 
that we make God a liar. 

3. A third mistake, which is closely allied 
to the one I have mentioned, is this : To make 
an auricular confession instead of a private one. 
Some people do not understand the difference 
between auricular confession and private con- 
fession. By an auricular confession we mean 
the confession that is made to the priest of the 
Roman Catholic Church. Since the twelfth cen- 
tury it has been an established custom in the Ro- 



154 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

man Catholic Church, that at least once a year 
every member must make a complete enumera- 
tion of his sins to the priest. That is what we 
call auricular confession. It is not necessary 
that the Roman Catholic should be face to face 
with the priest. A curtain hangs between him 
and the priest. The priest does not need to 
know who it is that confesses this or that sin, 
but he must hear that confession, and conse- 
quently it is called auricular, coining from the 
word that means ear — an ear confession. That 
confession we believe is a mistake, and we be- 
lieve it because God's Word plainly says, as the 
Augsburg Confession here quotes: "An enu- 
meration of all our offenses is not necessary in 
confession, for this is impossible, according to 
the declaration of the Psalmist: Who can un- 
derstand his errors?" Ps. 19:12. The mistake 
is this: You have sinned a thousand times to- 
day that you know nothing about. Where is 
the man that can count his errors? Do not think 
for a single moment that sin is only sin when 
you know it. I may have done you a wrong 
today and not know a thing about it, yot it is 
a sin before God. Ignorance does not excuse 
sin. Private confession is something entirely 
different, The Lutheran Church has always 
believed in private confession. We shall ex- 
plain more fully what we mean by that in a 
few moments. 

4. The whole world has felt the necessity 
of confession. There was a time when private 
confession was known all over the Protestant 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 155 

Church, as far as the Lutheran branch of it was 
concerned. Then came a time in history when 
one part of the Lutheran Church said : We have 
got to get away from the old customs; we must 
leave the old Augsburg Confession ; we have got 
to take up these new-fangled ideas, take any- 
thing that comes along that can make Christians 
in a hurry. And so the} r gave up a large part 
of the Augsburg Confession, and a large part 
of the catechism, and they went to a saw-mill 
and got a bench, and said, The people can now 
go to the bench instead of to the preacher; and 
how often have you seen poor sinners lying on 
the mourners' bench searching for peace and 
not finding it; how often have you pitied an 
honest young man or woman, feeling that some- 
thing must be done, that there must something- 
come to the soul that he has not got, lying thereat 
that altar night after night, and week after week, 
and then some men, too dumb to give anybody ad- 
vice, sitting around telling them what to do. 
Oh, the mistake that churches have made! Un- 
derstand me rightly. Woe unto me if I should 
ridicule the honest soul that is searching for 
salvation at a mourners' bench, or anywhere 
else; but I say shame on the ministry that has 
been so ignorant as to let souls wander in dark- 
ness when they might find the light. When I 
was a little boy we very often went down to the 
woods and cut large sticks, and then we would 
vide them up the lane and make ourselves be- 
lieve we were racing horses, but after all, they 
were only sticks, and not as good as the good 



156 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

old horses that we learned to ride afterwards; 
and what I call these new-fangled ideas that 
come along instead of the good old Word of 
God to show people these truths, are nothing 
after all but little hobby horses we have been 
riding, and thousands of people today in trou- 
ble and trials do not know where to go to find 
peace, do not know what to do next. Oh, the 
woeful mistakes that poor sinners have made, 
feeling their sins, and not knowing how to find 
peace. 

III. Let me by the help of God try to make 
the way plain to you tonight about confession 
and absolution. Let ine show you that confes- 
sion and absolution are strictly Scriptural, that 
the Word of God is so plain on that subject 
that nothing can be plainer. Concerning this 
doctrine the catechism says : 

"Confession embraces two parts : one is, that 
we confess our sins; the other, that we receive 
the absolution or forgiveness from the confessor, 
as from God Himself, and in no wise doubt but 
firmly believe, that thereby our sins are forgiven 
before God in heaven." 

"■What sins should we confess?" 

"Before God we should plead guilty of all 
sins, even of those which we do not know, as we 
do in the Lord's Prayer ; but before the confessor 
we should confess those sins only which we 
know and feel in our hearts." 

What are these? How is a man to know 
his sins? 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 157 

"Here consider your station according to 
the Ten Commandments, whether you are a 
father, mother, son, daughter, master, mistress, 
servant ; whether you have been disobedient, un- 
faithful, slothful; whether you have grieved any 
person, by word or deed; whether you have 
stolen, neglected, wasted anything, or done other 
harm." 

Do you think it hurts children to teach them 
these great truths? 

"What is the Office of the Keys?" 

"It is the peculiar church power which 
Christ has given to His Church on earth to for- 
give the sins of penitent sinners, and to retain 
the sins of the impenitent, so long as they do not 
repent." 

Where do we find this? 

John 20th chapter : "The Lord Jesus breathed 
on His disciples, and saith unto them, Receive 
ye the Holy Ghost. Whose soever sins ye remit, 
they are remitted unto them; and whose soever 
sins ye retain, they are retained." 

"What do you believe in accordance with 
these words?" 

"I believe that when the called ministers of 
Christ by His Divine command deal with us, 
partcularly when they exclude the manifest and 
impenitent sinners from the Christian congrega- 
tion, and again absolve those who repent of their 
sins and are willing to amend, that this is as 
valid and certain, also in heaven, as if Christ, 



158 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

"Can ministers then forgive and retain sins?" 
"Yes, God does it through them." 
Proof : Matt. 16 :19. "I will give unto thee 
the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and what- 
soever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound 
in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on 
earth shall be loosed in heaven." 

2 Cor. 2:10. "For if I forgave anything, to 
whom I forgave it, for your sakes forgave I it 
in the person of Christ." 

If there is anything in the Word of God 
more Scriptural than confession and absolution, 
I would like to know what it is, and yet I am 
ready to say that you might attend some 
churches for fifty years and you would never 
hear a sermon on one of these texts. You might 
belong to some denominations all your life and 
you would never hear there was such a thing 
as the Office of the Keys. Is one part of God's 
Word less valuable than the other? Isn't it a 
fact that here is a great teaching and a great 
comfort that many people know nothing about? 
I am here tonight to make this way to forgive- 
ness plain because God has made it plain. 

1. I have already shown you that people 
have sins ; I have shown you that people in their 
blindness are making woeful mistakes because 
they are not rightly instructed. What is the 
way made plain? The first thing I want you 
to understand and never forget, is this, that 
Jesus Christ did forgive sins when He was here 
on earth. Have you forgotten how they brought 
to Him a man on his bed, sick of the palsy, and 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 159 

Jesus said unto him: Son, be of good cheer; 
thy sins be forgiven thee? And have you for- 
gotten that He was condemned by the Jews be- 
cause He did forgive sins? There ought to be 
no question among you that Jesus Christ does 
forgive sins. 

2. If that is plain, then let me go further. 
He not only forgives sins, hut He also forgave 
■sins through the apostles. Will anybody deny 
the Scriptures, when Paul said (2 Cor. 2:10) : 
"If I forgave anything, to whom I forgave it, 
for your sakes forgave I it in the person of 
Christ?" The apostle Paul does not deny for 
a moment that he pronounced forgiveness of 
sins on people who repented, but he did it in 
the person of Jesus Christ. 

It is not only true that Paul did this, but the 
other verse I quoted shows clearly that Jesus 
Christ gave that power to all of the apostles 
the very day that He arose from the dead. That 
same night He went to a room where the dis- 
ciples were, and lifted up His hands, and 
breathed on them the Holy Spirit and said, 
Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Whose soever sins 
ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and 
whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained. 
If there is anything clearly taught, it is that 
the apostles had the power given to them from 
God to say to repentant people, Your sins are 
forgiven, and if they did not repent, to say to 
them that they are not forgiven, and it was 
jusl as certain as if God spoke from heaven. 



160 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

Do you say there is anything strange about that? 
Why should there be? 

3. I not only say He forgave sins through 
the apostles, but it is an admitted fact all over 
the world, that what the Lord gave to the 
apostles, He gave to the church, as long as the 
world stands. Jesus Christ who Himself for- 
gave sins while on earth, who forgave sins 
through the apostles after He ascended on high, 
today forgives sins through the Church of God. 
Is that hard for you to understand? We are 
about to build a library in this city. Where did 
we get the money? We haven't got it. Where 
are we going to get it? From Carnegie. Was 
Carnegie here? No, sir. Has Carnegie written 
us a personal letter? No. What has he done? 
He has simply stated a fact to his secretary, you 
tell those people in Mansfield that under such 
and such conditions I will give them thirty thou- 
sand dollars. The secretary puts his name to 
it. We have got the letter. We believe Car- 
negie. We believe his secretary. We buy the 
Episcopal Church property. We tear their 
church down. We are going to build that li- 
brary. The contract is given, and it is all based 
on the fact that Carnegie has sent a message 
to us that this thing is true. Some people will 
believe a poor sinner like Carnegie but will not 
believe the Lord Jesus Christ. Has not Jesus 
Christ done the same thing? Hasn't He given 
us the message, and put His name to it, and 
sealed it with His blood? Wasn't it with His 
wounded hands that He said: Receive ye the 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 161 

Holy Ghost. Whose soever sins ye remit, they 
are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins 
ye retain they are retained? I say this promise 
is made to the Church. Let me read you a few 
verses from Matt. 18 :17-20 : 

"And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell 
it unto the Church : but if he neglected to hear 
the Church, let him be to thee as a heathen 
man and a publican. Verily I say unto you, 
Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be 
bound in heaven : and whatsoever ye shall loose 
on earth shall be loosed in heaven." Carnegie 
says: Whatsoever you, my secretary, say shall 
be done in Mansfield, shall be done; and what- 
soever you say shall not be done there, shall not 
be done. You believe Carnegie; are you going 
to believe Christ? "And again I say unto you, 
That if two of you shall agree on earth as touch- 
ing anything that they shall ask, it shall be 
done for them of My Father which is in heaven. 
For where two or three are gathered together 
in My name, there am I in the midst of them." 

The strange question is sometimes asked: 
If Christ were in Mansfield tonight, what would 
He do? Jesus Christ is in Mansfield. Jesus 
Christ is in this church tonight. And Jesus 
Christ in this church tonight authorizes this 
church to say to every man that repents of his 
sins, Your sins are forgiven; and to every man 
that will not repent, Thy sids are not forgiven; 
and it is just as sure as if God stood here and 
told you. Why did He say to Peter: T will give 

11 



162 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven? 
Every child knows what the word keys means. 
If I were to say to this little boy, What are these 
keys for, what would be your answer? 

Little boy answers : To lock a door. 

And when it is locked, what are they for? 

Answer: To unlock it. 

Any child knows that that is what Confes- 
sion and Absolution is. It is the Office of the 
Keys. Christ said to Peter : I will give to thee 
the keys of the kingdom of heaven: Whatso- 
ever thou shait bind on earth shall be bound in 
heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on 
earth shall be loosed in heaven. You as mem- 
bers of the First Lutheran Church acknowledge 
your sins; you are sorry for them; you believe in 
Christ ; you want to live a better life ; you come 
to me and say, What can I do? and I will say, 
in the name of God, Your sins are forgiven. It 
is not I that forgive the sin, but I am God's 
messenger to unlock and it is as much unlocked 
as if God's voice cried out from heaven: Your 
sins are forgiven ! On . the other hand, when 
you say, I have done wrong, and it is my busi- 
ness and none of yours what I do, I want ycu 
to understand that when you go out of the 
Church of God in rebellion against God's holy 
law, that your sins are locked as much as if 
God came here and locked them against you, 
and they will stand locked on the Judgment 
Day. You cannot trifle with the means of grace, 
or with God's holy law, and have peace. This 
may be an unpopular doctrine, but it will be 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 163 

popular on the Judgment Day, let me assure 
you. 

The proposition therefore that I lay down 
in conclusion is this : Jesus Christ forgives sin 
through His Church as He did to Luther. Our 
Lutheran Churches in the whole world today 
boast of Dr. Martin Luther, that great man 
who brought liberty not only to Germany, but 
to the world; but how many people know that 
Dr. Luther got peace in the confessional? How 
many people know that Dr. Luther never knew 
what peace was until he bowed down and con- 
fessed his sins to John Staupitz, who made clear 
to him the Office of the Keys, and he arose a 
new man, and thereby brought about the ninety- 
five theses that resulted in the great Eeforma- 
tion? 

Not only did Dr. Luther get peace through 
confession, but it is just as true that John 
Arndt, one of the greatest writers of true Chris- 
tianity since the days of the apostles, got all 
his heart searching information from the con- 
fessional. Some people say this leads to for- 
mality. I want you to understand there never 
was a more spiritually minded man than John 
Arndt. John Arndt's "True Christianity" will 
reveal your own character, yonr own thoughts, 
your own life, to you as no other book outside 
of the Bible will do. Why did that man know 
so much about human life? How did he learn 
all this? now has he been the means of bring- 
ing peace to many sonls all over the world, 
through their reading of "True Christianity?" 



164 THE WAT MADE PLAIN. 

He sat down hours every day and had his people 
come to him and reveal their trials, and sor- 
rows, and troubles to him, and thereby he 
learned to know the human heart; and know- 
ing the human heart, he preached as no man 
has preached since his day. Do you know why 
some preachers never can reach the heart? Be- 
cause they never come in contact with it. Do 
you know that half of these sermons I am 
preaching to you come out of my closet where 
people come to me with their sighs and sor- 
rows? And do you know that the man that 
stays away from humanity and does not get 
down to the hearts of the people, never knows 
how to reach the hearts of the people? John 
Arndt, that great man, learned human nature 
and how to preach by comparing God's Word 
with the hearts of poor sinners that sought for 
peace. 

Not only is this true of John Arndt; it is 
true of the greatest missionary of recent years. 
Every enlightened Christian will have to admit 
that Louis Harms was one of the greatest mis- 
sionaries in the last century. It was Louis 
Harms at Hermansburg that turned that whole 
country from heathendom to a prayer meeting. 
He sat down many hours every day for people 
to come to him and get sins forgiven, because 
they did not know nor understand their own 
hearts nor the Word of God. No wonder Louis 
Harms lives today in the hearts of all Christian 
people. He found out the conditions, and trials, 
and troubles that some people have. 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 165 

Dear friends, do you know that that is the 
great want in the Christian Church today? The 
most of the churches have got preachers but no 
pastors; they have got men that are speakers, 
but not men to comfort, and the poor people 
do not know what privileges they have got. 
Some one may say, Well, what right have I to 
go to my pastor? He is only human; this might 
exalt him and make him proud ; and besides this 
is something I do not care to have the world 
know. You do not know what a real pastor is. 
If there is anything in the world that makes a 
real pastor feel miserable it is that he must sit 
down and in God's name be used to comfort 
some sinner that wants peace and does not him- 
self know how to find it. You do not under- 
stand what it means to be a real pastor. Do 
you know that when you come to me with your 
trials and want advice, when you are in trouble 
and seeking peace, do you realize that when I 
give you that advice, I forget all about myself? 
I stand there not in my own personality; I stand 
there as a messenger of my God to tell you what 
Jesus says, and what He did say that will give 
you peace. No man's saying will give you peace. 
It is only when we can point you to the Word 
of the living God that fits your case that you 
get peace. And do you know that when you 
come to me and tell me that which troubles 
you, and get your peace, that that is locked up 
forever? We are even taught, and correctly 
taught, in our theological seminaries, that what 
any one comes to you and gives to you in the 



166 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

confessional, yon dare not reveal, even though 
it were the government that demanded it. 1 
want you to understand that we take no oath. 
We never take an oath, but we recognize that 
a sinner searching for peace at the hands of 
God has a right to have that settled between 
him and God alone, or between him and God's 
messenger; and God's messenger is not re- 
sponsible for the advice of God himself. And 
so there is a wonderful peace in this great doc- 
trine of Confession and Absolution, and while 
I know that many young boys and young girls 
would have avoided thousands of mistakes if 
they had known just where to go at the right 
time, let me this night invite my young people 
to be honest with their own souls, honest with 
their church, honest with their God, honest with 
their pastor, and remember that when you go 
to him, you go to one whom God sends to you 
with a key to lock if you do not repent, and to 
unlock and give you peace if you do repent, 
and after all it is only God that forgives. Keep 
that in mind and you will have no trouble on 
the subject of Confession and Absolution. I 
know of no way to better conclude this whole 
message than simply to read to you a few verses 
more from this beautiful chapter of John : 

"If we say that we have no sin, we deceive 
ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we con- 
fess our sins, He is faithful and just to for- 
give us our sins, and to cleanse us from all un- 
righteousness. If we say that we have not 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 167 

sinned, we make Him a liar, and His Word is 
not in us." Amen. 



Prayeb. 



O God, our heavenly Father, we do thank 
Thee that before Thine eyes our sins are all 
known; and we thank Thee that Thy holy law 
is able to make us feel our sins, and confess 
them to Thee. Do Thou help us as Thy people 
to confess all our sins to Thee, even those which 
we do not know nor feel in our hearts; and 
when we do feel our sins and feel that we need 
comfort, help us to find Thy servant and con- 
fess our sins before him, that he may give us 
Thy Word of comfort and Thy forgiveness. O 
Father in heaven, bless us tonight; help us to 
realize what a great privilege it is to belong to 
Thy household; to have Thine own Church, Thy 
Bride, whom Thou didst so love as to die for her, 
say to us from the great Messenger Divine, Thy 
sins are forgiven thee. Father in heaven, do 
Thou help us to appropriate this truth to our 
souls tonight. Hear this prayer in the name of 
Jesus Christ, who taught us to pray : 

Our Father who art in heaven: Hallowed be 
Thy name; Thy kingdom come; Thy will be 
done on earth as it is in heaven; Give us this 
day our daily bread, and forgive us our tres- 
passes as we forgive those who trespass against 
us ; Lead us, not into temptation, but deliver u& 



168 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

from evil; For Thine is the kingdom, and the 
power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen. 



Question No. 1: Why does God want us to 
confess our sins to man? 

Answer: My first answer is because He 
said so. 

Secondly: Because we have committed our 
sins against man; therefore we ought also to 
confess our sins to man. 

Thirdly : To restrain us from sinning. Did 
you ever stop to think that if you could sin and 
were not compelled to confess that sin to man, 
that you would go right on and sin, and settle 
it with God, thinking the world wouldn't know 
anything about it? God in His infinite wisdom 
has so arranged it that no man can get peace 
until he has told somebody his sin, and that very 
telling will make him careful the next time. 

Fourth: I would say next, it is manly. 
Some people think it is not manly to confess 
a sin. There is nothing more manly in the 
world. The man that makes a mistake and is 
not willing to confess it, lacks true manhood. 
The man that makes a mistake and does con- 
fess it, thereby shows that he is a true man. 

And finally, I would say that it makes him 
strong. The longer you try to hide a sin, the 
weaker you are getting; the sooner you confess 
your sins, the stronger you get, and you will 
be less apt to sin in the future. 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 169 

Question No. 2: What is the difference be- 
tween repentance and confession? 

Answer: Repentance means to feel very 
sorry for your sins, and to believe in Jesus 
Christ. You can feel sorry for your sins, and 
believe in Jesus Christ, and keep your mouth 
closed. Confession means to repent and tell it. 
Therefore I would say that confession is spoken 
repentance. 

Question No. 3: Should we not despise 
everything that approaches Rome? 

Answer: We have a good answer to that in 
history. During the Reformation there was one 
man made up his mind that anything that Rome 
had was wrong. The result was he knocked all 
the windows out of the church and threw them 
out of the house; he wouldn't have one thing 
that Rome had. It took about two hundred 
years for that man and all his followers to see 
that they made fools of themselves. Let us not 
for one moment think that Rome has no truth, 
nor that we ought to oppose everything that 
Rome has. That would mean to oppose the best 
hospitals in the United States. That would mean 
to oppose some of the best works of charity 
that ever have been done. Always pity the 
man that runs to the extreme that he cannot 
see any good in anything. 



THE LOED'S SUPPER KNOWS NO OTHER 
WAY. 

John 14:6. 



Jesus saith unto him, I am the Way, the Truth, and 
the Life: no man cometh unto the Father but by Me. 



Sanctify us, O Lord, through Thy Truth 
Thy Word is Truth. Amen. 



Beloved in Christ: — 

The Word of God is truth. And just as sure 
as it is truth, just so sure will no man be saved 
on the Judgment Day unless he is saved by the 
Lord Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, that taketh 
away the sins of the world. If one man can be 
saved without Christ, this Book is a lie, and if 
this Book is a lie, I have no business to preach 
it; and it does seem to me that the actions of 
people in these days show very clearly that some 
people think that after all the old Bible might 
be mistaken. Now it being a fact that there is 
only one way that reaches to heaven; it being a 
fact that the only way to come to that Way is 
faith, and it being a fact that there is only one 
way to get faith, and that is through the Word 
of God, then, my friends, the most important 
thing in all the world is to preach the Gospel, 

(170) 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 171 

and to hear it, to believe it, to live it, and pro- 
claim it to a dying world. 

I have shown you clearly that the Word of 
God knows no other way except Jesus Christ, 
to the Father; I have shown you clearly that 
the law of God knoAvs no other way ; it will damn 
every man or send him to Jesus Christ; I have 
shown you clearly that the Apostles' Creed 
could not possibly exist, were it not for Jesus 
Christ; I have shown you clearly that there is 
no prayer heard in heaven except it come by the 
only way, Jesus Christ ; I have shown you clearly 
that there is no such thing as Holy Baptism 
without Jesus Christ; I have shown you clearly 
that there is no peace of soul unless you get for- 
giveness of sin, and all this lies in Christ; and 
now, finally, it is my desire to show you this 
evening that 

THE LORD'S SUPPER KNOWS NO OTHER WAY TO THE 
FATHER EXCEPT THROUGH JESUS CHRIST. 

He is the Way and the only way to the 
Father. 

With regard to the Lord's Supper, I would 
show you in the first place that it is Jesus' last 
will and testament. We sometimes call this Sup- 
per the Sacrament of the Altar, because it was 
first celebrated at a table. We sometimes call 
it the Lord's Supper because it was first cele- 
brated in the evening, and consequently the Ro- 
man Catholic Church, as well as many Protestant 
churches, have the candles burning when the 



172 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

I 

Lord's Supper is being celebrated, to remind us 
of that first evening when Jesus instituted it. 
Sometimes it is called the Eucharist, because it 
brings us the wonderful grace of God. By what- 
ever name we call it, Dr. Luther has given the 
best definition of the Lord's Supper ever given. 
"It is the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, under the bread and wine, for us Chris- 
tians to eat and to drink, instituted by Christ 
Himself." Now what are these Words of insti- 
tution? These words, as given by Matthew, 
Mark, Luke, and St. Paul, who all testify that it 
is Jesus' last will and testament. The words as 
given by these four witnesses are these: u Our 
Lord Jesus Christ, the same night in which He 
was betrayed, took bread, and when He had 
given thanks, He brake it and gave it to His dis- 
ciples and said, Take, eat ; this is My body which 
is given for. you : this do in remembrance of Me. 
After the same manner also He took the cup, 
when He had supped, gave thanks and gave it to 
them, saying, Take, drink ye all of it; this cup 
is the new testament in My Blood, which is shed 
for you and for many for the remission of sins, 
this do, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of 
Me." You see clearly from these words that He 
calls it the new testament; and we understand 
that testament means will. When a man makes 
his last will, it is distinctly stated that it is his 
last will and testament. Now then, how could 
there be such a Lord's Supper if there were no 
Jesus Christ? And how could there be a Lord's 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 173 

Supper if Jesus were not the Way, the Truth, 
and the Life? 

Now, concerning this testament, I would say, 
in the first place that it was made just before 
He died. That is a good time to make a testa- 
ment if you never made it before. You do not 
know as well as Jesus did just exactly when and 
how you will die, and consequently you had bet- 
ter make a will now if it isn't made. Do not 
think for a moment that just because you make 
a will that you have got to die. You had better 
make your will while you have got your good 
mind, while you are well. You had better make 
your will now, for after a while you may not be 
able to make it, and it seems to me you ought to 
know what ought to be done with your property. 
You must give an account of your stewardship. 

Not only should you make that will, but if 
you find in six years from now that you ought 
to change it, it is yours; you can throw it into 
the fire and make another one, but have it made. 
Know your business well, and let your wife know 
your business well, in order that there may not 
some smart man come in afterwards, and by 
the time he is through, he has the property, and 
your family nothing. 

Let me call your attention now to this great 
truth: That Jesus Christ made His will just 
when He was in His best years, at the age of 
thirty-three, before His sufferings really began in 
Gethsemane. He made His will just at the time 
when every one should make it, in the best years 
of His life. 



174 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

He not only made this will just before He 
died, but He made it a very plain will. You 
understand that men may be poets, but no man 
ever yet made his will in poetry. When a man 
makes his will he must not only make it so it 
is plain and can be understood, but he must 
make it so plain that it cannot be misunderstood, 
and you will find by reading - these words over 
carefully, that this will is made so plain that 
any child can understand about every word that 
is in it. And furthermore, you will find it is 
given by different witnesses, and every witness 
says just exactly the same thing. 

Not only was this a very plain will, and made 
just before His death, but it was a will that He 
has never changed. Some men may make a will 
today, and tomorrow they change their minds 
and make another will; sometimes they add 
codicil after codicil, until you hardly know 
which is the real will. Not so with Jesus Christ; 
for the words that I read this evening for a les- 
son, found in the 11th chapter of 1 Corinthians, 
are words that the apostle Paul received, not 
from Matthew, nor from Mark, nor from Luke, 
but he received them directly from the Lord. 
Nor did he receive them a year after the will 
was made, but possibly twenty-five or twenty- 
six years afterwards. He wrote this letter to 
the Corinthians in the year 59. We find that 
this is the only letter out of the fourteen in which 
the apostle Paul said one word about the Lord's 
Supper. We take it for granted, therefore, that 
he received this special message from his God 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 175 

at least twenty-five years after Jesus Christ in- 
stituted the Holy Supper. The remarkable fact 
is that although Paul got his testimony from 
Jesus direct, it is word for word the same as it 
was instituted up in that upper room where it 
was first celebrated; consequently the apostle 
Paul begins with the memorable words : "For 
I have received of the Lord that which also I 
delivered unto you, That the Lord Jesus Christ, 
the same night in which He was betrayed took 
bread ; and when He had given thanks He brake 
it and said, Take, eat, this is My body which is 
broken for you; this do in remembrance of Me. 
After the same manner also He took the cup, 
when He had supped, saying, This cup is the 
new testament in My blood: this do, as oft as 
ye drink it, in remembrance of Me." You see 
plainly that the Lord God in making this will 
never changed one thought. Twenty-five years 
made no difference, and twenty-five hundred 
years will make no difference, for the last words 
in this Book say that if any man will add to this 
will or take from it, to him shall be added the 
plagues which are in this Book. 

Oh, how thankful we ought to be tonight for 
the unchangeable God. And now, why should 
you make a change? Remember my text: I am 
the Way, the Truth, and the Life: no man 
cometh unto the Father but by Me. If Jesus 
Christ is the only way, if He is the truth, why 
change it? God doesn't need to change His 
Word. Tt is the truth, because the Son of God 



176 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

is the living truth. The Lord's Supper knows 
no other way except Jesus Christ. 

II. In the second place I call your attention 
to the fact that this is Jesus' rich legacy left to 
His Church. A will is of no good if there is no 
property to distribute. Sometimes people make 
wills, and then when they are dead you begin to 
inquire for the property, and there is none. The 
Lord Jesus Christ made no mistake when He 
made His testament. He left us a very valuable 
will, — a will that is His rich legacy to the true 
Church of God. 

There are some things about a will that do 
not seem to be very valuable. For instance, the 
paper on which it is written. The paper for a 
will costs five cents — a very, very small price. 
But remember, my friends, that will that cost 
only five cents may convey property worth five 
millions of dollars. When I say to you that the 
Lord Jesus Christ in the Lord's Supper gives 
us bread and wine, you may say, Why, that is 
nothing; we can get bread in the cupboard, and 
we can go and raise wine out in the backyard 
from the grape-vine. True, but who gives you 
the wine from the grape? Who was it that said, 
I am the vine and ye are the branches? That 
wine comes from Jesus Christ. That bread that 
you eat comes from Him, and do not think be- 
cause it is common, it is worth nothing. Here is a 
little strip of paper. It may not be worth a quar- 
ter of a cent, but if a rich man goes and writes 
on that paper, to the Richland County BaDk, 
Pay to Mr. So-and-so one thousand dollars, and 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 177 

signs his name to it, that little paper, worth a 
quarter of a cent, is worth one thousand dollars. 
And I would have you to remember that in this 
common bread which you see every day before 
your eyes, and in the wine that you press from 
the grape that grows on the vine, the Lord has 
seen fit to give to the Church of God a wonderful 
legacy. 

Why did the Lord God give His Holy Supper 
through such common visible earthly means as 
bread and wine? Because He wanted His 
Church planted all over the world, and wherever 
it is planted He wanted it to find the visible 
means through which He can pour out the great 
treasure of His grace. Why, for instance, did 
God command that in baptism we should use 
water? Because no man on earth will live where 
you cannot find water; and consequently He so 
instituted His Church that we might have a 
sacrament, that wherever there is a man on earth 
that wants to be baptized, and another to bap- 
tize him, that this can be done. Philip and the 
eunuch drove across the desert, but even that 
desert was not so dry that they could not find 
water, and when the Bible says they found 
plenty of water, remember that a little bit of 
water in a desert is plenty. If I should find you 
out on some lonely island, without a well, or 
without a spring, and you wanted to be baptized, 
with a few drops of water I could baptize you. 
That is the wisdom of God. And in the same 
manner wherever the people are found on earth, 

12 



178 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

God has good bread, and wherever bread is 
found the people can live, and find wine, and 
wherever there is wine and bread, and the Word 
of God, they can have the Holy Supper. And 
there you find the wonderful treasure that God 
lias given to us in this testament. 

But, my friends, these things that I have just 
now mentioned, the bread and the wine, are only 
the outward symbols of what God gives men in 
these things. I do not say they are symbols, 
either. They are the right elements in which, 
under which, and through which God in His own 
mysterious way gives Himself to us. You may 
take the bread as it is found on your table, or a 
wafer, such as I hold in my hand. The question 
might arise: Why do we prefer the present 
wafer to the ordinary bread? I will tell you 
why. Here is a wafer that is made without yeast. 
I can take that wafer and come to you when you 
are breathing your last breath, when you cannot 
swallow a bite of bread, if I can put that in 
your mouth, it melts like honey, and you can take 
the bread and the wine, and receive the Lord's 
Supper in the last moment of your life, which 
you cannot do with the bread that is made with 
yeast. And if you will just remember that the 
Lord Jesus Christ instituted the Holy Supper 
when they were celebrating the Passover, you 
will remember that it was celebrated with un- 
leavened bread and not with bread made with 
yeast. But bread — flour and water — is the 
element that is visible, and wine is the element 
that is visible, in which the Lord God has seen 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 179 

fit to give us the wonderful treasure of His body 
and His blood. 

I said awhile ago that this will is plain; that 
this will cannot be misunderstood, if men will 
take Christ at His word, and yet some churches 
have miserably misunderstood this will. There 
is one great denomination having more members 
than all others put together, that cannot find 
the bread nor the wine in that will. There is 
one large denomination, with its power on the 
seven hills of Rome, that says the priest only 
shall have the wine, in spite of the fact that 
Jesus Christ said. Drink ye all of it. That will 
is so plain that no church has a right to mis- 
understand it. That Word is so plain that any 
one who can read and understand four words, 
positively knows that Jesus has promised the 
communicant bread and wine and body and 
blood, and yet there are many Protestant de- 
nominations that can never find the word "body" 
and the word "blood." There are many sectar- 
ian churches that have put words into that will 
that Christ never put there. In every church 
Avhere the minister stands up and says: Take, 
eat, this represents the body of Jesus Christ, 
and, take, drink, this represents the blood of 
Christ, that man has committed forgery in the 
will of God. You have no more right to put 
'represents" where God put "is" than I have to 
take your note, scratch off your name and put 
another there, or to sign your name to a note 
with which I draw money. It does seem to me 
that some people trifle too much with God's 



180 THE WAT MADE PLAIN. 

Holy Word. The words are so plain, and any 
one who will read this will carefully, will find 
that there are four things that the man receives 
when he goes to the Lord's Supper. The apostle 
Paul was not so ignorant, nor so wilfully sinful, 
as to change the words of Jesus. In 1 Cor. 
10 :16 Paul writes these memorable words : "The 
cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the com- 
munion of the blood of Christ?" If it is nothing 
but wine, how can it be a communion of the 
blood of Christ? Again : "The bread which we 
break, is it not the communion of the body of 
Christ?" How could the bread be a communion 
of the body of Christ if there is no body of 
Christ there? How do I know that in the Lord's 
Supper we receive not only bread and wine, but 
also Christ Himself, as He says, body and blood? 
I know this for five reasons: 

I know it in the first place because the sacra- 
ment is so plainly taught that no one can mis- 
understand it unless he wants to. 

Second, because Jesus Christ never failed 
to do what He promised. When Jesus said to 
Lazarus, Arise! did He fail? When He said to 
the blind eyes, Be opened! did they fail to see? 
When He said to the deaf, Hear! did they fail 
to hear? Then why should any one believe that 
when Jesus Christ said, Take, eat, this is My 
bodv ; and, take, drink, this is My blood, that He 
should tell a lie there? Whatever Christ has 
promised, that He can do. Do not forget that. 

And then, again, I have just called your at- 
tention to the fact that the apostle Paul tells 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 181 

us distinctly that there is a communion between 
bread and body, a communion between wine and 
blood. How could there be such a communion 
if one is, and the other is not? 

Again, I call your attention to this great fact, 
that the Old Testament has types, and the New 
Testament has the fulfillment. Circumcision in 
the Old Testament was a type of baptism in the 
New. The Passover in the Old Testament was 
a type of the Lord's Supper in the New. The 
brazen serpent in the wilderness was a type of 
Christ on Calvary. That brazen serpent repre- 
sented Christ, but you have no right to say that 
the One on Calvary represents Christ. That is 
Christ. You can say in the Old Testament that 
Isaac, the son of Abraham, born of the virgin 
womb of his great and aged mother, carrying the 
wood on his shoulder up on Mount Moriah to 
offer sacrifice, is a type of Jesus, but you cannot 
say that Jesus Christ, carrying His cross on Cal- 
vary's hill represents the Savior. He is the 
Savior. And so every truth taught in the New 
Testament is not a type, but a reality. And so 
any one who will study this doctrine carefully, 
must come to the conclusion that in the Lord's 
Supper Jesus is giving us a reality and not a 
representation. 

And, finally, why would the apostle Paul tell 
us that if a man comes to the Lord's Supper and 
does not discern the Lord's body, that he is eat- 
ing and drinking condemnation to himself? Let 
me quote that verse. 1 Cor. 11:27-29. 

"Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, 



182 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall 
be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord." 
You are not guilty of the body and blood of the 
Lord when you eat dinner and eat bread at your 
house, with a glass of wine with it. "But let a 
man so examine himself, and so let him eat of 
that bread, and drink of that cup. For he that 
eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and 
drinketh damnation to himself." Why? Listen: 
"Not discerning the Lord's body." That is what 
makes him unworthy. The man who goes to the 
Lord's Supper and imagines he is going there for 
a little bread and wine, and does not discern the 
Lord's body, in that Supper is eating and drink- 
ing condemnation to himself. 

How many people in these days think that 
we ought to just say to every man in every 
church, come on to the Lord's Supper, as if it 
were our own, and just a little lunch of bread 
and wine, when we positively know that some 
people go to the Lord's Supper, and do not be- 
lieve they are getting anything but a little bread 
and wine, as emblems and symbols of Jesus 
Christ, thereby eating and drinking condemna- 
tion to themselves. What right has any minister 
of the Gospel to invite anybody to eat and drink 
condemnation to himself? If I were bold enough 
to walk up and down the streets of Mansfield 
and invite every stranger I meet to go to your 
house for supper, you would soon come to me 
and say: You can invite these people to your 
own supper, but stop inviting them to mine. 
And yet ministers of the Gospel seem to think 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 183 

they have more authority than Jesus Christ, in- 
viting people to come and eat and drink con- 
demnation to themselves. They do not say it 
that way, but it means that. If it just repre- 
sents body and blood, you haven't any body and 
blood, and you are eating and drinking condem- 
nation to yourselves, not discerning the Lord's 
body. If that does not prove there is some- 
thing more in the Lord's Supper than emblems 
and types, then I do not understand God's Word, 
and I have lost my reasoning powers. 

It is not only true, my friends, that in this 
great legacy we have bread and wine, and Jesus 
Christ Himself, but it is also true that we have 
the very thing for which Jesus died; and conse- 
quently the real heir is the believing sinner, not 
the believing man that never sins. You know 
there is a common idea among some people that 
they would go to the Lord's Supper if they were 
just perfect enough. I have heard men say time 
and again, I am not fit to go to the Lord's Sup- 
per, because I am a poor sinner. Did you ever 
ask yourself the question, why Jesus did not 
partake of His own Supper? Did you ever ask 
yourself the question why it was that the angels 
never went to the Holy Supper? Did you ever 
ask yourself the question, Keally, now, what is 
this Lord's Supper? Listen! The will says: 
"Take, drink ye all of it; this cup is the new 
testament in My blood, which is shed for you 
for the remission of sins." What if you have no 
sins? Why do you want to come to the Lord's 
Supper? Do you forget that the Lord's Supper 



184 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

is one of the means of grace through which God 
comes to you? The Germans call such a service 
as this Gottesdienst — a God's service. Now in 
a real God's Service, God comes to us through 
His Word and through the Holy Sacraments, 
and we go to Him in prayer. Therefore, when 
you come to the Lord's Supper, remember that 
the treasure is this : He is your Savior, giving 
Himself to you, the Savior that bled on Calvary 
and died for sinners, and now gives you the seal 
of your forgiveness. Peace be unto you, poor 
sinners, says Christ. Receive Me and your sins 
are forgiven. Go forth with new strength and 
lead a better life, and come back and feed your 
soul as often as you can on this great Supper 
of Mine. 

This leads me to a final question: Why 
should we go to the Lord's Supper? Let me give 
you four very brief reasons : 

1. Go to the Lord's Supper in order that 
you may refresh your hungry and thirsty soul. 
Why do you eat three meals a day? In order 
that you may not starve. . And yet there are peo- 
ple who have never gone to the Lord's Supper, 
and there are people even calling themselves pro- 
fessed Christians who do not go to the altar once 
a year, and sometimes not in ten years. If those 
people could see their poor, starved souls, they 
would weep. A few years ago when the great 
famine was in India, there were pictures placed 
all along the streets showing the poor, starving 
Hindoos. With a feeling of sympathy the world 
arose and sent bread that those people might 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 185 

live. If you could see your poor soul staying 
away from the Holy Supper, you would find it 
starved and so near dead that only immortality 
can still keep it living. Therefore, go to the 
Lord's Supper, and do not starve your soul. 

2. Furthermore, you ought to go to the 
Lord's Supper to remember the death of Christ. 
We sang this evening that beautiful hymn, "I 
will remember Thee," but how can you better 
remember the Lord Jesus Christ on Calvary, 
than to hear and obey the words of Jesus : "Take, 
eat, this is My body which is given for you: 
this do in remembrance of Me. . . . Take, drink 
ye all of it ; this cup is the new testament in My 
blood, which is shed for you for the remission 
of sins : this do, as oft as ye drink it, in remem- 
brance of Me." If that does not take you to the 
foot of the cross, what will? 

3. Some one will say, I would go to the 
Lord's Supper, but my faith is so weak. My 
dear friend, suppose you were sick, and then you 
were to say, I would eat and drink but I am so 
weak. A good physician would say, Sick man, 
eat, or you will starve. Drink, or you will grow 
weaker every hour. Just because you are sick 
and weak, eat and drink, that you may get 
strength. And for that very reason you should 
come to the Holy Supper. The very thing that is 
keeping you back, the weakness of your faith, 
ought to urge you to come up and receive 
strength from the Holy Spirit, who comes to 
you through the means of grace. 

4. And, last of all, you ought to come to the 



186 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

Holy Supper to make a confession before the 
world where you stand. The Lord Jesus said, 
"He that will not confess Me before men, I will 
not confess before My Father in heaven." Do 
not think, my friends, that the only way to make 
a confession is to stand up and make a speech. 
There are some people, my friends, who are the 
very best of Christians, that never could make 
a speech ; and there are some people who are not 
gifted to stand up and make a public prayer nor 
gifted with beautiful speech before the world, 
for I have noticed in my short life that the best 
Christians cannot be tested by their public 
prayers, nor can they be tested by their beautiful 
speech. The best testimony that any man on 
earth can give, is to show by his daily walk what 
he is. That is the living testimony. And when 
a man sits back in the church during the cele- 
bration of the Holy Supper and has not got cour- 
age enough to get up on his feet and walk before 
the altar of God, he is denying Christ; he is 
ashamed of Christ; but when he gets up on his 
feet and solemnly and prayerfully walks down 
to the altar of God, and there receives the body 
and blood of Christ, under the visible means of 
bread and wine, it is a testimony to every one in 
that house of God, this man is not ashamed of 
Jesus Christ. It is a confession that we all 
ought to make. 

There is one little word that I would love to 
quote in every sermon, and I want to close this 
series of sermons with the same word, and that 
is the one that is found in 1 Cor. 10 :12 : "Let 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 187 

I 

him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he 
fall." There is no time in your life when your 
soul is more in danger than just when you posi- 
tively stand up and say, I am a strong Christian, 
and I never will fall. That is the very moment 
that Satan is watching to give you the trip that 
will make you fall. The strength of your Chris- 
tianity lies in this : Oh, my God, but I am weak ! 
Oh, my God, without Thee I can do nothing! 
Take my hand and hold me tight, and lead me, 
not into temptation. Amen. 



Prayer. 



O Father in heaven, the hour has come when 
many who are sitting in this house must decide 
whether they shall fully accept Thee or fully 
reject Thee. And we pray Thee, O God, that 
Thou wilt help that not one man, not one woman, 
who has not fully come out on Thy side, may 
this night refuse to accept Thee fully, and decide 
to serve Thee all the days of their lives. May 
the truth which we have heard in these six ser- 
mons on the wonderful words: I am the Way, 
the Truth, and the Life: no man cometh to the 
Father but by Me, be indelibly written on the 
brain and on the hearts of all these hearers. 
And may we now, O God, lift up to Thee our 
prayer, coming by the name of Jesus, who is the 
Way, the Truth, and the Life; and pray the 
prayer which He has taught us : 



188 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

Our Father, who art in heaven : Hallowed be 
Thy name : Thy kingdom come : Thy will be done 
on earth, as it is in heaven: Give us, this day, 
our daily bread: And forgive us our tres- 
passes as we forgive those who trespass against 
us : Lead us, not into temptation, but deliver us 
from evil: For Thine is the kingdom, and the 
power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen. 



QUESTION BOX. 

Question No. 1. Can a member of the con- 
gregation administer the sacrament to a person 
in the absence of the minister? 

Answer: I would say in answer to that 
question, that if there were two Christians in 
some lonely state all alone, and no pastor could 
be called there, that one may give to the other 
the communion, providing he thoroughly under- 
stands it. But I would furthermore say it is 
not wise that any member of a church should 
give communion to another, for the reason that 
the Lord God has said, Let all things be done 
decently and in order ; and that the Holy Supper 
is not like baptism, a means of regeneration; 
if it were, it would be different. A man can be 
saved without the Lord's Supper, if he does not 
despise it. And, furthermore, it is supposed 
that he is a Christian before he is a communi- 
cant. The case would therefore have to be a 
very rare one in which a member would give 
another the Lord's Supper. 

Question No. 2. Isn't it wrong to ask one at 
confirmation, to be faithful to the Evangelical 
Lutheran Church until death? 

Answer: I might answer that by asking a 
question. Is it wrong to ask you to believe the 
literal Word of God until you die? If you be- 
lieve that, you are a Lutheran; and if y^v *v>. 

(189) 



190 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

lieve that, you cannot be anything else. I am 
glad that I took the vow that I will be faithful 
to the Evangelical Lutheran Church until I die, 
and I expect to keep it, because I am simply 
keeping God's Word just as He gave it. 

Question No. 3. If it is possible to eat and 
drink condemnation at the Lord's table, isn't it 
best to stay away? 

Answer: No. The thing to do is to find out 
the truth, and then come. Because strychnine 
is poison, it isn't my duty to go and smash every 
bottle in the drug store that has that poison in 
it; but they ought to know how to make the right 
use of it. The Lord's Supper is a blessing, and 
therefore receive it as a blessing. You might 
just as well say, if the law puts a man in the 
penitentiary, wouldn't it be better to do away 
with all law? The same law that puts a bad 
man in the penitentiary is the same law that 
keeps me out if I behave. So this Holy Supper 
is a wonderful blessing to every man who re- 
ceives it rightly. It is a condemnation to the 
man who doubts the word of Jesus, "given and 
shed for you for the remission of sins." 

Question No. 4- Can't a man be a good 
Christian even if he does not go to the Lord's 
Supper? 

Answer: Jesus said: This do in remem- 
brance of Me. The question is, Can I not be a 
good Christian if I do not do this when God 
says I shall. Do you see the point? You are 
disobeying Christ, and you cannot be a good 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 191 

Christian if you stay away from the Lord's 
Supper. 

Question No. 5. Is it advisable for a member 
of one church to commune at another, (1) being 
of the same denomination? (2) of different de- 
nomination? 

Answer: I would answer in both cases that 
it is not wise, and I will tell you why. Suppose 
Brother Baltzley at St. Luke's Church has a dif- 
ference with one of his members; he may take 
that member into discipline; and then the man, 
instead of going back to his own church, comes 
down here and takes the Lord's Supper. What 
right have I to give him the Lord's Supper? How 
do I know a man from another church is not in 
discipline where he comes from? The Savior 
says: Take heed of the flock over which the 
Holy Ghost has placed you. How can I take 
heed over my flock, if some other shepherd is 
going to do the feeding? What we want to do 
is to stop and think about these matters, in order 
to learn that every man should go to commun- 
ion, first of all, in his own church. Suppose 
you go on a visit to some other State and you 
cannot be in your own church. It will only take 
a short time to get a word from your pastor to 
that pastor, to give you communion there. That 
is in order, but this thing of running from one 
church to another to get communion, when no- 
body knows why you are there, is disorderly, 
and I would advise that no member should make 
it a rule to go to any church except his own. 



192 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

As to different denominations, I would say 
this : How could I, for instance, go to the Lord's 
Supper where I know they have not got it? If 
I go into a church and the minister says, Take, 
eat, this represents the body of Christ, how can 
I take it? The trouble is, so many people do not 
know what the Lord's Supper is, and conse- 
quently it is just the same to them. 

Question No. 6. What would you do if you 
received anonymous letters? That means, What 
would you do if you received letters written by 
people who do not sign their names? 

Answer: When I used to get those letters 10 
or 15 years ago, they made me almost angry, and 
I made up my mind that I would hunt up the per- 
son who wrote them. Now I have a better way. 
Whenever I get a letter, I open it, look at the 
signature first, and if there is no name to it, I 
throw it into the waste basket and never look at 
it. That is the best way to handle that kind of 
letters. The man who would write a letter and 
not sign his name to it, is the same one that 
would run a dagger into your back if he found 
you in a back alley. Just yesterday I received an 
anonymous letter, and it started out to say some- 
thing about our choir. Well, I read just a few 
lines — I forgot to look for the signature first — 
then when I looked and there was no name 
signed to it, I tore it up and do not know what 
was in it. 

Question No. 7. Why do you think it wrong 
to take part in a service of a lodge at a grave? 



THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 193 

Answer: I can make this very plain. Sup- 
pose the Roman Catholic Church had a funeral 
this afternoon. What right have I to go up 
there to the grave and have another service? 
Did you ever see two churches have a service at 
the same grave? If two churches would not do 
it, why should a church and some other organi- 
zation do this? Is the church service such a 
miserably poor thing that it has to be finished up 
by some organization, claiming they have no 
religion? If they have religion, what is it? The 
Church's teaching is that Jesus Christ is the 
only Way, the Truth, and the Life, and no man 
cometh to the Father but by Him. The lodges 
do not say anything about that. It seems to me 
it ought to be plain to every Christian heart that 
the Christian burial service is complete. When I 
pronounce the benediction I pronounce it on the 
Christian burial. If any other organization, I 
do not care by what name it is known, wants to 
have another service, let them have it, but do not 
ask me to take part in it. Some man says : Why, 
we have no religion at all. Well, then, why not 
get the Fire Department to bury the man; they 
have no religion. The real truth is just what I 
keard in a barber shop the other day, that if it 
wasn't for advertising these things you would 
mot find them. That is the fact. Whenever a 
burial becomes so cheap that we use them for 
advertising, I am done with them. 

Thus we have tried in simple words to make 
plain the way of salvation as taught in Dr. 



194 THE WAY MADE PLAIN. 

Luther's catechism, that matchless key of the 
Bible. "God's Word and Luther's doctrine pare 
slmil to all eternity endure." 

Finis. 



,AK 5 1909 



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